


Exstinctor

by aadarshinah



Series: The Ancient!John 'verse [4]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Amnesia, Ancient John Sheppard, Asurans, Canonical Character Death, Descension, F/M, God Complex, Good Intentions, Kidnapping, Kings & Queens, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Replicators, Season/Series 04, Sentient Atlantis, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:56:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 63,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what becomes of gods?</p><p>[The entire fourth season of the Ancient!John 'verse - ie, SGA's S4, with bits of post-series SG1 and SGU's S1 thrown in.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exstinctor, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the starr of S4. I had considered holding out and waiting until had more ready, but then I decided I needed to publish or it might never happen. Exstinctor most adequately translates as Annihilator, I hope there is adequate pain and angst, and reviews make the process go faster.  
> Without further ado:

29 June, 2007 / XXX Qui. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

The very picture of insouciance, John lifts his hands off the back of the couch and holds them high, wide, and inviting, as if he were welcoming Colonel Ellis and his threats into the city rather than laughing at this latest lie. Chuckling slightly, "Go right ahead," he says, allowing his arms to fall carelessly back onto the couch, one of them brushing against the back on Rodney's neck as it lands. "The few of my kind that remain in the Higher Planes are idiots and imbeciles, more concerned with clinging to their out-dated, broken philosophies than they are with doing something good and just and right for once in their miserable lives. I'll even press the button, if you want. After all, what's one more genocide on my conscious?"

Rodney's eyes, which have been watching Colonel Ellis manage to somehow stiffen despite the metal rod already shoved up his ass, snap to John. "Be serious," he admonishes.

"I am," John says lightly, not even looking at him. "Go," he tells the Colonel, waving one of his hands dismissively. "Get the Sangraal. I promise to wait right here for you to get back. I won't even shoot at your ship or anything."

"John," he hisses. "Don't be stupid. The Sangraal will kill you."

"The Sangraal only kills things in the Higher Planes," he says confidently, barely glancing his way, "and I'm rather hopelessly mired in this one."

"How about we not test that theory," Rodney suggest before turning to the only other sane person left in the room. "Lorne, just tell the man you don't want to be imperator and finish this mess now. I'm tired and I'd like to go to sleep some time before morning."

But Lorne…

Lorne just stands there, shaking his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Doctor McKay. If there was any other way, believe me, I'd take it, but Icarus is… He's not himself anymore. He's let them turn him into a god."

"Don't be an idiot, Major. John knows he's not a god. He only puts up with the Ancestral religion because we needed a compelling reason for planets to join the Confederation."

"He's been abusing his powers."

"To build us ships!"

"To build us ships," Evan agrees quietly, "and to alter your memories."

For a second, the only sound Rodney can hear is the rush of blood in his ears – no one in the room seems to dare breathe, and even 'Lantis, normally so vibrant and full of life, pauses her song. He cannot believe it. He doesn't want to believe it. Yet Evan seems so certain of it, to the extent that he's sided with Earth and Colonel Ellis against them…

He turns towards John. Quietly, so quietly that even he has to strain to hear, he asks, "Is it true?"

"Rodney-"

Oh, that tone of voice. John has been able to make him do any number of things with that voice. And here it is now, trying to make him understand with that one word, trying to make him forgive the unforgivable just by how he says his name. That he's using it all is proof enough, but Rodney has to hear it. He has to hear him say the words if he's ever going to believe it.

He jumps to his feet. Ignoring Evan, ignoring Radek, ignoring Colonel Ellis, he moves to stand directly in front of John, so close that an inch or two more would have him standing between his spread legs. "Tell me," he begs, hating how his voice quivers but unable to steady it. John has always made him brave, but how can he be brave against John? John is-

John is a good man.

John is selfless and righteous and kind.

He is the best man Rodney has ever known.

He won't meet Rodney's eyes.

It takes a lifetime for John to answer, and though he's not moved from the couch everything about him has changed. Everything about him is sharper now, harsher, colder. He's no longer then man who spent the last hour joking and drinking shitty redcurrant wine with the enlisted men in the mess hall; he's become the man who ordered them to annihilate a planet without so much as a second thought, the one whose hands are stained by the blood of his own people; the one who still believes deep in his soul that the only thing worthwhile about himself is his ability to destroy and so gave himself over to the task with the greatest aplomb.

For all this, John doesn't look like he's going to start attacking anyone. He looks resigned but not repentant, as if he'd do it all over again, exactly the same, from the moment he sat down in the Control Chair so many years ago to this moment now.

Rodney should hate him for it, but he can't. He loves John, loves him even as he breaks his heart, saying, "I had no choice-"

"Dammit, John!" he snaps, the flush of betrayal making him bold. Love or not, this is his mind they're talking about – the only thing that makes him anyone important, that makes him anyone at all. If he wasn't undeniably the smartest person in two galaxies, then nothing Elizabeth could have said or done would have made him part of the First Expedition. Without which he would never have met John, if they had even managed to find John in time, before he bled out from ten thousand year old injuries.

And John had risked destroying that with every time he meddled with his mind. "How many times?" Rodney asks, voice remarkably even.

"You wouldn't listen-"

"How many times?"

"I had to make you listen-"

"How many times?"

"Three."

"You bastard," he rails.

John rises to his feet, more smoothly and gracefully than he actually managed as a mortal, his robe swirling like the shadows around him. "I did what I had to do," he says. "I didn't like it, I didn't want to, but it had to be done," his voice powerful and pleading at once.

John is a mess of contradictions at the best of times – a confused, tangled mass of old and young, alien and human, solider and civilian, Caesar and supplicant; utterly loyal but incapable of believing anyone might be loyal to him, full of violent good faith but sceptical to the point of incredulity, a believer of people but not ideals, a consummate soldier but not militant by nature, dismissive of blood but fiercely protective of his chosen family. In short: a good man who refuses to be great, which has the rather unusual consequence of making him the best of them all.

But this is far from the best of times. As a result, the diametric contention at the core of John's very being has been pushed to extremes – he is now hero and villain, saviour and conqueror, creator and destroyer, prophet and pariah, god and the devil himself all at once. The slightest touch could push him to either terminus once and for all, without recourse or remorse.

"How is meddling with my memory something that had to be done?"

"You weren't listening. I had to make you listen – I had to make you see."

What Rodney doesn't know is how he couldn't see it before. The man he fell in love with is gone, or near as. All that remains is the mask he wears to hide the truth that Evan saw long before he did: that people are what they pretend to be, and John had played god for too long for it not to have an affect on him.

"See? See what?"

"That I've not changed. I'm still the same person I was before I Ascended."

Maybe there is still something of the ridiculous, impossible man he'd fallen on live with in this creature – this fallen angel, this nascent god. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully. But, "You think you're a god!"

"They worship me. Isn't that enough?"

"That doesn't make you a god!"

"Every thing that I am, through no action of my own, is considered divine. To be myself is to be transcendent. I am sacrosanct by existing. I am holy because I am."

"That sounds like an awful lot of justification for someone claiming to be a god," Colonel Ellis interrupts – stupidly, in Rodney's opinion. Really, what is the American military teaching its officers these days? Certainly not how to avoid conflict and bloodshed, that's for sure. Still, he's grateful for the interruption. It covers the sound of his heart shattering into a thousand splinters that smash against the office floor.

John's eyes snap upwards, staring the other man down over Rodney's shoulder. "I'm taking the time to explain because I know you have a hard time understanding. Blind obedience isn't exactly something I go in for, or obedience at all, for that matter. Unlike some people, I don't think fear or forced indoctrination does all that much good in the long run."

"Funny coming from a man who just finished committing genocide on his second species in six months."

"I'm not looking to make it a third, but that doesn't mean I won't."

"Is that a threat?"

"No, it was an invitation to dinner – of course it was a threat," Rodney snaps, turning around so glare at Colonel Ellis himself. He's met people with less common sense, but all of them are dead. "Only, John doesn't do threats. He tends to tell you exactly what it is he's doing to do and proceeds to do it in exceptionally violent and nightmare inducing ways – and that was before he got it into his head that he was a god."

"I-"

"You want me to believe you've not changed?" he asks, rounding on John madly, all sense of self-preservation lost alongside his heart and any hopes he might have had for the future. Madness is driving him now, because it is either madness or heartache, and heartache won't get him anywhere – won't stop John from wiping his memory again if he decides Rodney doesn't adequately understand this time either. "Then you let Colonel Ellis get The Ark of Truth off his ship. If you're still singing the same tune after you look into it, then we'll talk about this god business. Otherwise we start taking separate vacations and figure out who gets the kids."

"Fine."

"I'm serious about-" Rodney blinks. He hadn't expected this to be this easy. He hadn't expected this to happen at all. The moment god had slipped past John's lips, he'd thought he'd lost him forever. "Fine?"

"Rodney," he says patiently, and he doesn't look any different. He just looks like John, eyes a little too old for his face, expression a little to alien for his features. He certain doesn't look like someone whose gone Ori and betrayed every trust Rodney had in him. But his is and he did, and that makes John's next words hurt all the more, "You're the only good thing that's ever happened to me. If looking into the Ark is what it takes for you to believe me, I'll do it twice a day and three times on Sunday for the rest of our lives."

"Oh," Rodney breathes.

Even after years of being together, he always is surprised by the ferocity of John's love for him. That, even so far gone, so close to the edge that he must be clinging to the edge of reason with his fingernails, so close to falling that he hasn't got a clue how deep he really is, he's willing to risk all of that for him.

John is Ascended. Even if he's not the god he claims, somewhere, locked inside the brain that is only a manifestation of his desire for a tangible body with all the trappings of mortality, is the knowledge of how the universe works: The nature of dark matter. The superfluous details of the universe's birth and the shape of its death. The exact method of unifying gravitation with electronuclear force and finding that final theorem, the theory of everything.

Rodney's not stupid. He's easily the smartest person in two galaxies. On his good days, he'd even go so far as to extend that qualification to the known universe. But the fact remains that he will never acquire even a tenth of the knowledge John now has, even if he devotes himself entirely to solving the unsolved problems in physics and doesn't concern himself with any of the fifty-odd crises that are happening on or around Atlantis at any given time.

And despite all that, John loves him. As ignorant and tiny and mortal as he is, John loves him. Loves him enough to sacrifice everything he believes, for him.

It's a terrible and heady thought, and he's counting on it to save John.

"Colonel Ellis," he manages when he's finally found his voice, Rodney's voice sound thin and distant even to his own ears, "go get the Ark." Only dimly aware of the Colonel contacting his ship and beaming out of the room, he turns his full attention back to John. "After all of this is over, you and I are going to have a long talk."

"I hated it. Every time I had to-"

"Don't," Rodney says sharply, finally turning away. He catches a brief glimpse of Radek, sympathetic, and Evan, cautious, before he closes his eyes to shut them and the whole rest of the universe out. "Just, don't, please."

He can hear John audibly sink behind him. "Alright."

An eternity passes. Then another. He considers looking at his watch and seeing just how long Ellis has been gone, but that would involve opening his eyes and having to admit to the world just how red they've become. If he doesn't admit it, it's not real. If it's not real, than this is all just a terrible, terrible dream. If this is all just a dream, then John is still the man he's loved all this time and not some devil wearing his face and using his voice, saying such seductive lies that he'd almost rather believe them then risk losing the one good thing he's ever had.

But this isn't a dream. John isn't a devil yet. Once he looks in the Ark, he will remember the truth. Then this terrible eternity will end and everything will go back to normal. Only that sounds like some god-awful lie Jeannie would tell Madison, like the tooth fairy. Even if they get John back, he'll never be the same.

He's already lost everything.


	2. Exstinctor, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for how long this took, but a combination of RL and my sudden, almost fanatic interest in writing the Sights Unseen drabbles have delayed the writing of this (I admit I'm somewhat addicted to the feedback, however minor, I've been getting from SU; it' is heady). Believe it or not, I'd originally intended for this to be MUCH angst-y-et than it ended up being, but it turns out I couldn't do that to the boys. Admittedly, I'm a little worried I go too OoC here, but... we shall see.  
> Radek's Czech is: "Why do I even bother? You are an ungrateful moron," and, "I liked you better before you went Nietzschen übermensch," respectfully. John's Latin/Alteran is, "fuck me sideways."  
> Also, as a warning, I spent a lot of the last 2 pages saying, "I am evil," as I wrote them.

**29 June, 2007 / XXX Qui. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus**

"Alright," John repeats, as if steeling himself, and just when it looks like he's about to add something to that, he walks straight out of the room.

Rodney expects him to disappear – to hide somewhere deep in Atlantis' labyrinthine halls that only he knows exists anymore – but, to his surprise, he only has to chase him as far as the Control Room, where he's now giving orders to Jinto and his whole host of minions - younger children from various worlds, sons and daughters of some of the merchants who keep semi-permanent residence in Tower 11 these days and a handful of orphans no one but John is quite sure how they acquired.

"Go down to the mess hall," he orders one of them, a girl with dark skin and untamed hair that can't be a day over than eleven. "Lock up the alcohol and start rotating people through the infirmary – tell Doctor Beckett I want as many people on saline dips as he has IV lines. I want everyone capable of manning a linter sober enough to do so before dawn."

The girl scampers to her (bare) feet and goes off at run to do John's bidding with no more than a toothy smile and a clumsy bow.

He turns to another – a boy this time, scarcely older, with pale, limp hair and a smattering of freckles across his face. He wears an old Expedition jacket – military black – and a blood red tunic underneath. "Wake up all of our people – the Émigrés only, none of the Expedition. Tell them I want them at their posts ten minutes ago. If anyone else asks you what's going on, tell them it's only a drill."

"Yes, Lord Iohannes," the boy says before running off.

John turns to a third, this one only eight or nine, saying only, "Bring me Doctor Kavanagh," before turning his attention back to Jinto, who's at the post Chuck mans during the day. "Raise the shield."

"John, what are you doing?"

"What I should have done ages ago."

"Oh, really! And what's that?" Rodney asks, standing on the other side of Jinto's station. He doesn't know what to do, what to say to make this right. All Rodney knows is that he cannot let John turn himself into the villain of his own story. A hair's breath may be all that separates John from becoming the conqueror of the galaxy he sought to liberate, but he can still be saved. Rodney has to believe that. Even if the John he gets back is not the one he's been slowly losing ever since his Ascension, he has to try. "Because it looks to me like you're about to start a war with Earth."

John rolls his eyes. "I'm removing the Second Expedition from the city. If Terra isn't going to trust me after I've done nothing but help them time after time after time, they can just go back to where they came from."

"John, I love you more than life itself, but I don't even trust you right now!"

For a moment, John looks stricken, but it passes quickly, the most unreadable of expressions taking its place. As it does, he turns to Jinto and says, "Open a channel to Apollo."

"They're already hailing us, milord."

"Good. Put them on."

It takes a moment, but eventually Colonel Ellis' image appears on one of the display screens, clear at the centre and fading around the edges, giving way to lines of Ancient script running across the screen. One displays the exact position and speed of Apollo in orbit, another the strength of her comm signal; the third counts the number of people aboard and the number of railguns pointed their way. It's an impressive number, but Rodney knows it would take a hundred 304sto make a dent in Atlantis' shield, even with their Asgard upgrades.

"Atlantis," Ellis asks, voice sharp with surprise, "Why have you raised shields?"

"Change of plans, Colonel. You're going to make ready to take aboard all the equipment the Second Expedition brought with them that I don't feel like keeping. I'm expelling the Second Expedition from the city."

"We have a contract-"

"And I'm breaking it."

"Colonel Sheppard, you cannot simply expect us to return to Earth with our tails tucked between our legs. So long as you are masquerading as a god, we will not tolerate your-"

John let's slip a bark of laughter. It's an ugly, harsh sound – the sound of a man on his way to the gallows, fully aware that he has no other options and so choosing to make it seem as if it were his choice all along. It's cocky and courageous, fearless and foolhardy, and one hundred percent the John Sheppard Rodney fell in love with. "You just don't get it, do you? You think that just because you don't like something means you have the right to destroy it – that because you succeeded against the goa'uld and the Haeretici where all else failed that you have the right to play Big Brother to the universe.

"But tell me, Colonel, who elected you? Which planets chose your race to be their policemen or their attack dogs? You use words like tolerate when the truth is that you're the ones being tolerated and I'm the only one around actually bothering to speak for the people.

"I never asked to be a god. All I've ever wanted to do was bring peace to this galaxy and right the thousands of wrongs my people did to their ancestors by abandoning them to the Wraith. They're the ones that named me god. They're the ones that chose this path – and look at all we've already accomplished: the Asurans have been wiped clean off the map and soon the Wraith will follow. If you've a problem with any of my decisions, take it up with them. They're the ones that made me."

"You're not a god, John," Colonel Ellis says.

"There are a billion people in this galaxy alone who say otherwise."

"John," Rodney interrupts before Ellis can offer a response that could only escalate things further, "just be reasonable about this. You don't have to like Earth, you can expel the Second Expedition, but don't start a war."

"There won't be a war," he says reasonably. "If they want a fight, we'll destroy them as easily as we destroyed Asuras."

"God damn it, John! My sister is on Earth!"

Shrugging, "We can beam her off."

"And what about all the other billions of people on the planet who have absolutely no idea that Atlantis still exists? You going to blow them up too?"

"If I have to."

"That's not you, John!"

"Why do you keep saying that?" It's phrased as a question but comes out more of an accusation, as if Rodney is someone the one at fault here, not he. "This is me, Rodney. This is who I am. This is what I do."

"No, no it's not. You just need to remember that."

"I remember everything."

"Then remember what you promised me," he begs, for once not caring about who can overhear, "I save you, you save me, no Ascended powers needed."

John shakes his head. "What I remember is that I watched you die. If I hadn't done what I did, you'd still be dead."

The image of a hallway, wide enough for three to walk abreast and stretching off into eternity, slips into Rodney's mind apropos of nothing. He can see himself screaming at John and John, bloodstained and careworn, pleading with him in return, but he can't make out the words.

Rodney stumbles backwards. "What did you do, John?" he asks, his words so distant he might not have said them at all – or, maybe, might not have said them now.

John moves towards him, concern outstripping his momentary anger, but they are not alone. It's Major Lorne who blocks his path, perhaps thinking in some strange way that he's protecting Rodney, but it's Atlantis that interrupts, all but shouting into the silence that has descended over the room-

/A linter has just dropped out of hyperspace. It is entering geosynchronous orbit above us./

"I.F.F.?" John asks, which must make no sense to anyone else watching because he doesn't even glance up at the ceiling. He just continues to stare unflinchingly at some spot just over Rodney's shoulder, as if doing so will fill him in on just why Rodney's so pissed with him – as if Rodney hasn't been trying to do exactly that for God only knows how many minutes now.

/No. Nor does it match the signatures of any linter we know./

"Futui in obliquum," John spits, turning back towards the still open comm link. "Apollo, d'you have a visual?"

"A visual on what?"

John's hand slams down on the console in front of him. The lights flare above him, turning John into a blinding bright spot in the centre of the Control Room. "Keep up," he snaps, harsh and not a little cruel. "I get that you're only Descendants, that ten years ago you'd never even left your solar system, but even you can pick up the contact that just appeared in orbit above Atlantis. So, again I ask, can you see it or not?"

Ellis, momentarily perturbed, turns to his technicians and confirms, yes, a something has just appeared in orbit above them. While he manoeuvres Apollo into visual range, Rodney watches Evan approach John slowly. Cautiously placing his hand on John's shoulder, "Icarus," he broaches, "you might want to tone it down a little."

"Why should I when they're being more incompetent than usual?"

"Because," Evan says, a little sharply himself, "you're sounding like Cousin Helia right now."

John sucks in a sharp breath at that, but before he can respond, Ellis says, "OK, I've got a visual. Looks like a satellite of some sort. No… Correction: it's a satellite, but in the middle there's a... Stargate."

* * *

Atlantis screams when the beam hits her shields.

* * *

Rodney rubs his temples tiredly. He can feel the weight of memories pressing in on him, so close to the surface but too far away to grasp as anything more than the slightest shimmers of suggestion.

"I am sorry."

"What for?" Rodney snorts, sparing Radek only the shortest of looks, preferring to stare tiredly at the sensor readings crawling damningly across his laptop than have to deal with people anymore today. "It's not your fault my husband's gone batshit crazy or that our brilliant plan to destroy the Replicators is probably going to end is us being vaporized by the proverbial death ray. At least, I hope not. If it is, we're in worse trouble than I thought."

Radek sighs dramatically. "You make it very hard to feel sorry for you."

"Good. I don't need anyone feeling sorry for me, particularly you."

"Proč ještě obtěžovat? Jste nevděčný blbec. I had important position at university after Exodus. People respected my work. There was even talk of a Bohr Medal. But, no, I chose to come back here and help you, for all the good it's done me."

"Oh, please. We both know that you've done your best work under me."

"Under you? I'm my own department head, you know."

"Please, we both know that department is a joke."

A bottle of aspirin slams down rather forcibly next to him. Following its trajectory, he finds John has slunk into the room while they're arguing and is now standing close behind him – farther than is his wont, but still close enough to grab Rodney shoulder and pull him under cover if necessary, because he learned long ago that John shows affection through actions, not words, and that if he bothers to pay any attention to half the things John says, he'll give himself a headache trying to make sense of it all.

So John is standing close, but not close enough to make Rodney uncomfortable. His posture is unthreatening, his sidearm hidden beneath his robes but still easily accessible, and his hair makes it look like he just rolled out of bed – in short, John's made an effort to appear as innoxious as possible. Which means John's made an Effort. Which means this Matters, which is gratifying but about five hours too late.

Don't get him wrong, Rodney still loves him, it's just going to take a long while and a good hard look in The Ark of Truth for him to start liking John again.

Provided, of course, they actually survive all this and can actually get John to look into the Ark, because the way things are going now, there are better odds that Jeannie will realize her life of vegetarianism is endangering the health and wellbeing of her daughter and repent of her crimes against nature.

"I take it you've come up with a plan to save the city and neglected to mention it? 'Cause it sounds to me like you guys are arguing about who works for who, which has to be wrong."

"Měl jsem tě rád víc," Radek says sourly, "než jsi šel Nietzschen übermensch."

"I can understand what you're saying, y'know."

"Just testing your translation matrix," he counters with a kind of militant cheerfulness that Rodney wasn't aware Radek had in him. He's kind of impressed. "We wouldn't want it to go out on us on top of everything else."

John's eyes narrow but he doesn't push the subject. "Victoria and Thetis got off safely with all of the non-essential personnel. Apollo is still in orbit with most of the Second Expedition's people and Vindicta and Aurora are in port in case we need a quick getaway, so we're ready for whatever city-saving plan you've come up with."

"There is no plan," Rodney tells him. "I'd say submerge the city, but since you insist that would be pointless-"

"The Asurans would know that would be the first step we'd take under an attack of this kind. They would have taken it into account."

"Yes, yes, so you say, but the fact remains that there is nowhere on the face of this planet that that thing cannot kill us."

"Alright," John says terrifyingly, clapping his hands together. "Let's go somewhere else then."

"Wait, what?"

"Atlantis is an urbs-navis. We can just fly her out of here. Pick another planet and," he makes a motion with his hand that he seems to think means fly, "go there."

"That… could actually work."

"Gee, thanks for the ringing endorsement there, buddy."

"Hey," Rodney says, turning around enough to give John a proper glare, "just 'cause we're in the middle of a Grade-A genuine crisis doesn't mean I've forgiven you for messing around with my memories. As soon as we've dealt with all of this, you and I are going to have a talk – one that better end with me getting my memories back, because, let me tell you, separate vacations are still not out of the question. But," he adds with a sigh, "we just don't have that kind of power. Not when we need every scrap of it we have to keep the shields at max."

"So use me."

"What?"

"I'm a g- an Ascended being," he corrects quickly, as if sensing how well the G-word would go over right about now. "That means I'm essentially an Alteran-shaped ball of electromagnetic energy – a walking, talking battery. So plug me in. I should be able to make up the difference you need."

"John-"

"Look, it's the only way we're getting out of this alive, so I don't see what choice-"

"It will kill you! And if you think for one instant I'm going to stand here and watch you pull this, this martyr crap on me one more time, it's not going to happen. I don't care how angry you think I am, I'm not going to let you do this!"

"What choice do we have?"

"I don't know!" Rodney exclaims. "We just need to find a way to take the burden off the shields for a minute, or calibrate one of the sensors on Aurora or Vindicta to track down the weapon at its source and bomb the hell out of it some more, or something. Something that isn't you sacrificing yourself on the altar of your conscious because you've somehow gotten it into your head that the only way you're worth anything is if you give your life for The Cause, whatever The Cause du jour happens. You've given up one life for this city already. You're not allowed to do it again."

"Rodney," he says softly, "I watched you die-"

"Then you know how awful it is. So don't you dare put me through that again."

"I gave up everything to make you alive again."

"What does that even mean?"

"You know."

"No I don't. You took the memory from me, remember?"

But it's too late, because next thing knows John's shaking his head, as if he knows everything Rodney is going to say – has ever said – will ever say – before saying with quiet resignation, "It's the only way."

And then, in a blink, he's gone.

* * *

They don't even make it out of the room before the engines start up, shaking so violently they're thrown to the ground as they rush for the nearest transporter.

* * *

**Atlantis, {?}, Pegasus**

The transporters are offline, though. Almost all the secondary systems are offline to conserve energy. By the time they make it to the Chair Room, the damage is already done: Atlantis is in hyperspace, en route to god alone knows where, and the bright, pure light that surrounds John as he pilots the city is fading fast – so fast that by the time they touch down on the ocean of some unknown planet, nothing is left of him but a shell and a shadow. But even those crumble as he tumbles from his seat and turn to dust before his body hits the floor.


	3. Sator, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You made all things by your word, and by your wisdom fashioned humankind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really did intend for this installment to be one chappie. But when I got to 4k words and realized that I'd a way to go yet, I decided I wanted feedback more than I wanted to wait.
> 
> 1) Sator means Creator, in the sower, founder, planter, originator sense of the term. It's seen a lot in the Vulgate, referring to god. There is a reason for this. I've not gotten there yet.  
> 2) I spent more time than is really advisable on creating an elaborate head!canon for the new Lantean homeworld, which defers somewhat from the one we see in S4 and S5 of the series. I may share them in a long, rambling post one day.  
> 3) I didn't mean to make this one end on a cliffhanger. It was incidental to where I hit 4k and realized I wanted to post.  
> 4) Some of the folks who appeared towards the end have appeared previously, in "Ascensiones." I've only detailed biographical information for one of them, but more are on the way. For one or two of them.

{?} – The Higher Planes

If he'd been a little more awake, Iohannes would have been surprised to find himself alive. As it is, the cold is so encompassing that it leaves little room for other concerns, numbing his senses and ladening his limbs. A great veil of exhaustion such as he has never known covers his thoughts. Even the task of curling in on himself, on the precious little heat still available to him, is nothing short of herculean.

Somehow, Iohannes manages it.

Somehow, he lives.

Somehow, he sleeps.

* * *

It occurs to him that he should be dead when he next wakes, but Iohannes does not trouble himself overmuch with it. He has often found himself alive when he expected to be dead and it has happened enough times the shock gives way to ponderous resignation before it has enough time to even set in. He has the vague sense that it would have been better for him to have died this time, but cannot put his finger on as to why.

Iohannes doesn't trouble himself overmuch with this either. He's still too tired, too cold, and uses what scraps of power remain at his disposal to create a heavy blanket from the nothingness around him.

He sleeps for a long time after that.

* * *

Time, however, is complicated. The best explanation that Iohannes has ever found for it is directly taken from Terran science fiction and goes something like this:

> Anything that happens, happens.
> 
> Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
> 
> Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
> 
> It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.

The others prefer something a tad bit more complicated, but then again, they always did. Either way, the end result is pretty much the same. Which is this: a long time in The Higher Plains isn't always a long time in The Lower, nor does it always move in the same direction – if, in fact, it moves at all.

* * *

**29 June, 2007 – Atlantis, {?}, Pegasus**

"C'mon, Pops," Lorne says placing a hand on his shoulder. "Let's get you out of here."

Rodney blinks prodigiously, some instinct putting his feet underneath him when all he wants to do is stay where he is, staring sightlessly at the Chair and it's environs as he tries to come to terms with the fact that John, who he thought would outlive him by millennia, spent his life-force to bring Atlantis and everyone yet within her to safety. It doesn't matter what he believed in the end, he still gave his life to save them. Again.

Maybe John had been telling the truth. Maybe, underneath it all, beneath the religious rhetoric and the delusions of grandeur, he'd not really changed. Maybe he'd still been John.

His voice sounding incredibly distant and hollow to his ears, he asks, "Where are we going?"

The hand on his shoulder is already guiding him, gently but deliberately, from the Chair Room. "If it was up to me, I'd be taking you to the infirmary, but as it is those of us still in the city are all gathering in the Conference Room. We've got to figure out where we are and what we're going to do."

"Oh." A pause. "It is up to you, you know." Lorne had been John's adopted son, his heres. The action had largely been political, but Evan had been one of John's closest friends outside of Rodney himself, the one person he'd had on Atlantis during the Second Exodus who saw him as something other than a monster. He'd even been John's best man at their wedding, a strange mix of son and heir and nephew and executive officer all rolled into one.

And now he is imperator.

"I wish I could give you the time you need, Doctor," he says, sidestepping the issue, "but we're going to need you if we're going to come through this in a few pieces as possible."

"He's really gone this time, isn't he?"

"I'm not counting him out yet, but… probably, yeah."

"That's what I thought," Rodney says weakly, looking down at his hands. They're still coated in dust. In time, that dust will wash way. In time, the cells of his body will wear thin and be replaced by other, newer versions of themselves, until there is no part of him left that John once touched. In time, he will forget John's laugh and his smile and the look on his face when he went off to die.

Rodney thinks he should go sit down again.

He goes to take sensor readings to figure out where the hell they've landed instead.

* * *

**  
{?} – The Higher Planes**

Eventually, Iohannes wakes, feeling almost as weak and numb and exhausted as he had before. But he must get up. He knows he cannot stay here, although he does not know why. He knows they will come for him, but he does not know whom. He must go, where he cannot say.

It's a struggle, but somehow Iohannes manages to get his feet underneath him. The hallway dances around him, the sensation only growing worse when he closes his eyes. Resigned, he heads down the hall, taking slow, faltering steps, with his eyes wide open.

* * *

As Iohannes walks, he remembers.

He remembers Loegria, that glittering blue world so full of water and wonder and life. He remembers how his people destroyed it because of religion and water and politics, because they didn't know how to listen to others, and feels ashamed.

He remembers Icarus Eosphorus, who was so good and kind and caring, the best Alteran their species had ever produced. He remembers how he walked with eyes wide open into his Haeresis, trying to save the one he most loved, and how he ended up becoming the worst of them all precisely because he cared too much.

He remembers his father, who was not particularly good or kind, or even a middling-to-average father, but who represented the pinnacle of Alteran science and technology. He remembers what he used to say: The hardest thing in life is doing what is right rather than what you wish to be right.

Father.

Iohannes stumbles at this thought. He is someone's son.

He's someone's brother, to a half-Terran boy born in the northern teaches of what is now Scotland long after Iohannes himself had gone into stasis. Davidus Constantin was his name. He counts all of Terra among his descendants, including Rodney and 'Helianus.

Descendants.

There are a billion in this galaxy alone. There are another billion in the home galaxy and seven billion, plus or minus, in Avalon. And in the other galaxies, the ones seeded by the satores and never visited by his people? Another three or four billion combined. At least half of these consider his race their gods. At least one-sixth of those had considered him to be their personal god before the end.

He had believed that once. (Once, he laughs at himself. Once had been scarcely hours before.) But it is so easy to see now jut how wrong he was, without the press of faith or howl of prayers in his ears. He had been no god.

No, that is wrong. Iohannes is a god by every definition, but it is the definitions themselves that are wrong, tangled up in so much lore that he may be the only one who can recall any part of the truth.

But if he's not a god, what is he now?

* * *

****

**3 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus  
**  
M35-117. That's their new home. It takes them five days and nearly all the coffee remaining in the city to manage it, but they do.

The planet itself is slightly larger than Lantea is – or Earth, for that matter – with a diameter of thirteen thousand three hundred kilometres, but the mass is slightly lower. It's also slightly further away from its sun, clocking in at one point twenty-six astronomical units, the combined result of which gives the planet a somewhat disconcerting twenty-one hour and sixteen minute day. A survey of the planet in orbit has shown it lacks a distinct mainland, but rather has a series of archipelagos with main islands ranging in size from Bali to Madagascar, all of which are confined to what appears to be a region of tectonic activity in the southern hemisphere.

'Lantis insists on calling it Nova Loegria, claiming that John had designated it as such inflight. Mostly lacking the will to fight the city, he and Evan have mostly gone along with it because getting 'Lantis to do anything now that John's gone is verging on the impossible.

Rodney still can't believe John's gone either. It seems… surreal. He can scarcely remember what his life was like before he found him bleeding out in the Control Chair so long ago, having risked his life to bring the city to the surface rather than allow the strangers who had entered his city to suffocate when the power failed. To this day, Rodney doesn't know why John did that, why he gave them that chance. He can only imagine how much it must be worse for 'Lantis, who'd known John his whole life.

He knows – knew, he corrects himself belatedly, knew – so little about John. He knows he was a tribunus in the Lantean Guard, that he joined up when he was seventeen but had been playing some part in the Wraith War ever since he been made pastor at age five. Most of what he knows about John's childhood comes from Janus' notebooks, from lines like, Licinus completed the calculations for the new railgun this morning, and, the experiment was interrupted when Ganos arrived to complain about Licinus' sporadic attention to his lessons, which tell the story of a child much louder and much lonelier than the man he married. Hell, he never even knew John's mother's name until they stumbled upon her ship and her stasis-preserved body last year.

And now he is gone, taking with him not only everything that made John who he was – all the things Rodney hoped to one day learn about his husband, – but all that remained of the Ancients. So much knowledge, senselessly lost, all because he'd been unable to see just how far down the rabbit hole John was falling.

"Nobody knew," Radek tells him, sitting down beside him on the couch in his living room, as easily as if this were Radek's city, Radek's suite.

Someone's taken to being with him at all hours since their arrival on Nova Loegria. They don't call it babysitting; they call it wanting to compare figures or hear what he's learned or being unable to sleep in the oppressive silence of the nearly empty city. Rodney would thank them for it if he didn't hate that they thought it was necessary – which, admittedly, it probably is, but he doesn't want to have to admit that to himself, let alone anyone else.

But still, "You knew," he accuses, because that is easy and familiar and all his higher thought processes are busy dealing with the more important problem of what the hell he's going to do now that John is gone.

"Only because Evan heard you both arguing after you figured it out."

"Which you neglected to remind me of after John erased it from my memory."

"I thought it for best. You only would have confronted the Colonel again, which would have had all our memories wiped."

Rodney snorts, but it lacks any real heat and ends up sounding like a particularly nasal sigh. "Yes, and that worked out so well for all of us."

"It might have, if Replicators had not retaliated."

"No, it wouldn't, because no matter how much John loves – loved," he corrects, throat catching on the word, he still can't say it, though it's been five days, "me, there are still a billion people out there who think he's a god, and that obviously has – had – some effect on him we couldn't anticipate. We know the Ori got their power from their worshipers. Who's not to say that it doesn't have some kind of narcotic effect, so that even if they didn't start out all that bad, they became addicted to it by the end and couldn't stop on their own?"

"Power is always addiction."

"I'm talking about literally. Something with actual, measurable, opiate effects."

It's Radek's turn to sigh. "What do you want me to say, Rodney? Mistakes were made. I am sorry for that. I would have liked to save the Colonel, but you were my friend first. If it had to come down to your wellbeing over his, I chose you every time."

"Oh," he says faintly, because oh. He can barely conceive of a universe where John chose to be with him of all people. The idea that he might have friends, less omnipotent but more cognisant of his flaws, who feel similarly is just baffling, particularly from Radek, who really has seen him at his worst.

"Yes, yes," Radek says with extreme dismissiveness, paying more attention to his laptop than to Rodney, "people like you and want to do nice things for you. Stop being so surprised. Now, come, Evan wants us to upgrade all the security systems before he gets back with Victoria and Thetis – and Apollo, if they are still at rendezvous."

"We shouldn't let them back. It never would have gotten so bad if they hadn't kept on pushing him." Maybe.

Maybe everything still would have gone wrong.

Maybe things never would have escalated if Rodney hadn't stuck those original devices into his brain in a vain effort to relieve the physical pain absence from the city had caused him during the Second Exodus, which later caused him to near Ascension, which seems to have been some sort of tipping point for John.

Maybe if they'd never constructed the Intergalactic Gate Bridge, which had caused them to stumble upon John's cousin Helia and the Tria-

Maybe if Elizabeth had never died-

Maybe if the others-

Maybe-

"Ano, but in the end they were right and we cannot run city with out them, so what choice do we have?"

They have plenty of choices, Rodney thinks, but none of them would work in the long run. The Confederation is built upon the peoples of Pegasus rallying around their god, but with their god gone and the Wraith still very much around, there's no guarantee that they'll say rallied around his adopted son without the advanced weaponry Earth can provided. The very thought of working with the SGC again when they all but pushed John to the brink, constantly doubting and undermining him, makes him feel sick.

If-

No. Now is not the time for if. John is dead. What's done is done. No amount of ifs or maybes or perhaps can bring him back.

Rodney reaches for his tablet. Work won't entirely distract him, but it is better than chasing his thoughts around in an endless loop, drowning in the question of where everything went wrong.

* * *

**  
**{?} – The Higher Planes  
  
The first steps are hard. Iohannes must struggle to put one foot in front of the other, leaning heavily against the rough-hewn walls to stay upright. His fingers catch on cracked plaster, scraping the pads and leaving thin lines of blood in the most jagged places. The floor is little better than the wall, covered with debris of varying levels of sharpness – a problem where bare feet and balance issues are concerned.

Iohannes tugs the blanket tighter around him and trudges on.

He grows stronger as he walks.

Eventually he reaches the great sandstone amphitheatre where the very few of his kind remaining dwell beneath the light of distant galaxies. And it is there that Josua Lal Tribunus finds him.

* * *

"We were wondering when you would show your face," Josua informs him, trying for causal and getting caustic instead. It is difficult to remember that once upon a time they'd been close friends, by the Alteran definition of the word. In life, he'd been upstanding, but Ascension has turned him cruel, stripping him of his humanity and turning him into one of the unfeeling marble statutes locked in this ivory tower.

But that's what Ascension does, doesn't it? It twists people, turning them into perverted reflections of themselves. Iohannes would know.

God, Iohannes knows.

He slumps onto one of the carved, crumbling steps. "Josua, I have had the worst day you could possibly imagine. I, quite literally, died today and that's not even the worst of it." No, that had been the way Rodney had looked completely, utterly broken at the thought he'd become what the others claimed, as if it was a personal betrayal on such a deep, fundamental level that he'd never before even considered the potentiality of being possible.

"You must be brought to trial for your crimes."

"Really? You really want to do this again?"

Josua doesn't answer. He just places a hand on his shoulder. A moment later they are standing in the centre of the vast amphitheatre, considerably fewer people in attendance than the last time he went through this. Fifty-one, not counting himself, are all that remain of their kind. They barely fill a space designed for several million.

"I guess so," Iohannes says, climbing to his feet. He's steadier, but not as steady as he'd like and certainly not sturdy enough to hold his own against the others. "You guys do realize we've had double jeopardy laws on the books since before the Third Loegrian War, right? You've already tried and punished me for the crime I just now got around to committing. I could use some time to stew in my own juices about that before you start making me defend every action I've taken since the womb."

"Sins of your calliper are so great that the law knows no bounds in curtailing it."

"That doesn't sound legal."

Athanasia Aquilidea, who had spoken earlier, responds again now, her voice oddly flat and emotionless, as if in Ascension she'd managed to shed what few emotions she'd learned in her ridiculously short life. "The legality of your sentence is not in question, your most recent crime is."

"Aren't they one in the same?" he asks, glancing around for a chair. Naturally there's not one, and the desire not to make this any worse that it has to be is weighing strongly against his desire to sit down. "Look, I know I messed up. I messed up big time. But I'll find some way to make it right. I don't know how yet, but I'll find a way-"

"That is not the crime we are concerning ourselves with at the moment."

"No? What us it then? My fashion sense? I've been told it's a crime against nature, but I didn't think they were serious."

"Cease your theatrics. You are here to stand trial for the murder of Chaya Sar Schismatica, nothing more, nothing less."

"You've for to be kidding me."

"We are not."

Iohannes turns his gaze on the man siting at Athanasia's right. He Ascended eighty years before Iohannes was born, but he knows Nicomedes Lahir Peritus. He's known men like Nicomedes his whole life: worshipping the past and neglecting the future, clinging tightly to the dictums of their ancestors and ignoring the fact that the Descendants have progressed far beyond the primitive things they were before Atlantis left Avalon. In his sharpest tone, he tells the man, old and greying even in Ascension, "It was an accident."

"That is immaterial."

"Please. Any if you would have done the same if you knew how."

"That too is immaterial."

"No. No, it's not. You can't just, just treat people one way and behave another. You've got to treat everyone the same or everything falls apart. Doing otherwise is how beings like the Wraith and the Asurans and Chaya come into existence in the first place. Hell, I wouldn't be here now if people had just treated me as I asked instead of praying to me."

"You chose your heresies." This comes from the man on Athanasia's left, Creon Syagrius Valens Praetor, who succeeds in being more irritating than Nicomedes only by virtue of having once been praetor of Tirianus and should thusly, in Iohannes' opinion, have known better. He glares particularly hard at Valens and is pleased when he manages to stand steady enough to really make it intimidating.

Slowly but surely, his power is returning.

He's so weak now compared to what he was, but what he was had the force of one billion faithful behind him. Even now, weak as he is, he is still stronger than any one of the others. Before long, he'll be stronger than them all combined – if only he can keep them talking long enough. Which, really, shouldn't be hard.

"After you forced it on me. I didn't want to ascend. You made me. You cursed me. You gave me no choice. And maybe I took those choices, but I never would have done so if you hadn't taken away all the others. If I'm at fault, so are you."

"That is immaterial," Nicomedes repeats. He's beginning to think that it's the only thing the bastard knows how to say.

"It's as material a it gets."

"Do not," Athanasia says coldly, the most emotion he's ever seen from her slipping through in her clipped vowels, "blame your Haeresis upon us."

"I wouldn't be in this position if you hadn't Ascended me."

"You made your choices."

"You Ascended me," I didn't choose that – and, oh, he can feel his blood warm as the anger sets in, driving out the cold and making him feel stronger than he has since he woke up on this plane, dazed and confused and uncertain of everything.

"You interfered."

"And you didn't?"

"That is-"

"If you say immaterial one more time, I will kill you."

"You," says Valens, rising to his feet as if his full height might somehow prove more intimidating to Iohannes, who has never known a moment of peace in his whole life and now never will because he is dead. He is dead and this is just an interlude before the end comes because it doesn't matter how much power is coursing through his veins, how strong and mighty he feels at this instant, any moment now he's going to lose control and then they'll see if he can repeat the crime he's on trial for our not. Either way, he'll not be making it back to the Lower Planes alive, "are a disgrace to the Alteran race."

"You watched the Haeretici enslave the home galaxy. You allowed the goa'uld do the same to Avalon. You let the Wraith harvest our Descendants in Pegasus for five hundred generations and me kill the last mortal members of our species without lifting a finger. Your approval is the last thing I want."

Josua surprises him – and Athanasia's tribunal - by stepping to the fore, intervening for him the way he always did when they were so much younger and mortal still. "You were a good man once, Icarus. You have bettered the Pegasus galaxy and everyone in it. But you cannot deny what you have become. We have done our best to save you, to bring you back from your Haeresis, but you have denied us at every turn. Look at yourself now. You cannot deny you have become everything you swore you would never be. So, please, if there is any decency left in you, let us do what must be done."

"And what must be done?" he asks, his anger now like a fire within him. Gone are his frozen limbs. They have been replaced by fists that shake, barely kept by his sides, and the roar of blood rushing through his ears.

"You have already confessed your crime," Athanasia informs him. "For this we shall return you to your mortal state. From there, we shall take your component molecules and spread them across the galaxy so that you will never again be a threat to us or the Lower Planes."


	4. Sator, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1) Radek's Czech is "You don't get paid at all."  
> 2) M-Theory, Big Bang, AJ 'verse Timeline, all of which might be helpful. Though I imagine it's a little unclear, for all I've tried to clear things up here. Feel free to ask me any WTF's you may have on reading this.

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

"Y'know," he says casually, fingers flexing at his sides for the gun he's not wearing, "that's the second death threat I've gotten today. This keeps up, I'm going to start taking these things personally."

Athanasia doesn't so much as blink – although, in truth, Iohannes isn't sure he's ever seen her blink. Most of the others don't bother. They've all forgotten – quite eagerly, it would seem – what it's like to be mortal. They keep up the pretence of humanoid bodies out of habit alone. Beyond that, their forms mean nothing to them, and if they so much remember the feel of sun or taste of water or the touch of the person they loved, they do not show it.

"You are a danger to every sentient being in the universe," she tells him, her voice neither as calm nor even as it had been ten minutes before. Her face, however, remains as if marble; the dark ringlets that frame it like whorls of onyx. If the Higher Planes had wind, it would not dare to touch her. If she had actual blood in her veins, a sentient being wouldn't either – not even to punch her, as Iohannes more and more finds himself wanting to do, at least until such time as he can acquire a gun and shoot her repeatedly, the gun being rather more to his liking. "Your path, while appearing to offer them salvation, can only lead to their untimely destruction."

"I don't see yours being much better."

"Our way allows for freedom of will."

"Your way gets people killed, you mean."

"Death is just one possibility. A meaningful life, full of observation, experimentation, and spiritual growth, is another."

"Fuck that," Iohannes says, leaning back on his heels. "Suffering is suffering. If you can stop it and don't, you're not worth the air you breathe."

"Icarus-"

"Yeah, how about you stow whatever high-handed, hypocritical bullshit you're going to try to feed me and  _listen_  for once in your goddamn miserable excuses for lives? 'Cause you may be right: I may be a monster. But, let's be real here: you guys are just the other side of the same spectrum. And, once you get to our level, that slider starts to look a lot less like a line and more like a Möbius strip. So if I'm the devil in pretty white robes, so are you."

"Your lies-"

"Sounds to me like you're protesting just a little too much here, Athanasia."

"You-"

"Yes,  _me_ ," Iohannes snaps, truly frustrated now.

He has, in no particular order: seen his plans to destroy the Asurans once and for all fail  _spectacularly_ , died, betrayed and been betrayed by the only family that has ever mattered to him, been placed on trial, died, declared himself a god, walked across half of creation, and, oh yes,  _died_. Anger, which normally builds in him like a cold furry, seeping into his veins and spreading slowly throughout his limbs before finally taking shape in a terse word or a drawn weapon, burns within him. He is dead, he is dying, and no matter how powerful he's feeling now, he's not going to be strong enough to survive this.

This thought makes him even angrier. Hasn't he given enough? Hasn't he lost enough? Yes, he's made his share of mistakes – more than his share, really – but does he really have to pay for them with his life? Doesn't he get a chance to redeem himself? Doesn't he at least deserve a chance to go down on his knees and beg forgiveness from those he hurt so thoughtlessly?

Ten thousand years. It sounds so long, but even such a life is all too short. He'd spent so much of it waist-deep in blood and death and suffering, intimately familiar with the horrors of war. All Iohannes wants is a chance to do some good for once in his miserable, god-forsaken life. Good that doesn't end with his empire crumbling apart because he fell prey to pride he never knew he had or with the one good thing he ever had in his life looking at him and suddenly seeing a monster.

But that's not going to happen. Not now. So he might as well go out bloody and screaming, taking as many of his enemies with him as possible, true to himself to the very end.

"And  _I_ ," he continues, feeding off the firestorm inside him, "am sick and tired of your  _arrogance_  and your  _excuses_  and your inability to comprehend how royally you've  _screwed over_  this whole universe. The Wraith, the  _Haeretici_ ,  _me_  – if you follow the trail far enough, it all comes back to you. Somebody should make you pay for what you've done."

"Icarus-"

"My name is Iohannes," he corrects coolly. Then he stretches out his hands and the world is engulfed in flames.

* * *

**9 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

"Nice planet you've got here."

Rodney turns to Radek, who's hovering at his elbow like the mother hen he not so secretly is, and says, "I don't get paid enough to put up with this."

" _Nemusíte dostat zaplaceno vůbec_ ," he mutters, elbowing him sharply in the gut before stepping forward to greet their guests. "General O'Neill, Colonel Carter, Doctor Jackson, how wonderful to see you again. If you'll come with me, we are set up in Conference Room."

"Colonel Sheppard's come to his senses then?" O'Neill asks, not unkindly. Still, it makes Rodney wince. They've not told the SGC. They've not told most people a lot of things.

Radek, the bastard, doesn't even flinch. "Something like that."

But Rodney can't handle the charade. It's hard enough to trail along behind the group and try not to look like he's still picking up the pieces of his broken life. Having to listen to people talk to John like he's alive and well when he's never coming back is just too much. Dully, he says, "John's dead."

This brings the Terran delegation up short, even as Radek sends a, " _Do prdele,_ " heavenward, to which 'Lantis flickers the lights sympathetically despite his not being a  _pastor_  or even  _custodia_. Traitor.

"What do you mean," Jackson questions slowly, as if they might just be misunderstanding the situation, "John's dead? He was Ascended. Ascended beings can't die."

"He gave his life to save us."

Rodney doesn't miss the eye roll this earns him. "Ascension," Radek explains, continuing up the Gate Room stairs, "is like highly-controlled, completely efficient nuclear detonation. All available mass is changed into electromagnetic energy, no different than what powers your cell phone or this city. It is obscene amount of energy, but still finite."

Sam spares a moment from the sympathetic look she's giving him to nod thoughtfully. Her husband is politic, glancing around the empty Gate Room in a way probably is far less casual than it looks as he says, "Yeah, I imagine a city this size gets, what? Six? Eight miles to the galleon?"

"The Ancients did not build for fuel economy, is true."

"So John is really dead." This is a statement more than a question and seems to shake Jackson as much as it continues to shake Rodney. "The Ancients are really gone now."

An irritated noise builds in his throat. "He wasn't-" Rodney finds himself saying. "He was more than just his species. John was better than them. He helped us and they punished him for it and-" It destroyed him.

"Rodney-"

"No, you don't get to  _Rodney_  me. I'm tired of being  _handled_  like I'm, I'm-" but he loses steam halfway through. "Fine. You know what? You just keep on doing what you're doing. Since you're not going to listen to me or any of extremely rational advice anyway, I'm just going to go back to the lab-"

Radek literally grabs the back of his collar and tugs him in the direction of the Conference Room. "No. You are coming to this meeting and you are staying."

"Out of curiosity," Sam asks, possibly to keep herself from laughing, "who are we meeting with?"

"Evan is  _imperator_  now."

"Major Lorne?"

"Well," Daniel muses, "John did adopt him."

"Yeah, but I thought that was all for show."

Evan catches the tail end of this conversation as they take their seats around the conference table, Radek making sure to manoeuvre it so that he's seated between Evan and himself, as if that will somehow ensure his good behaviour. Or, more likely, ensure his compliance with whatever ridiculous terms they agree with to bring the Expedition back. "I've come to the realization that everything Icarus did was for show, until it wasn't."

"How Zen."

"Philosophy major," Evan shrugs.

"I'm sorry," O'Neill says earnestly, taking off his hat and setting it on the table. "So, what will it take to allow our people to come back?"

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

Time unravels as creation burns around him.

He sees the universe collapse in on itself. He watches stars unravel and species spring, full-grown, from cataclysms before shrinking back to the first tenacious cell. Atoms split apart. Protons dissolve. Leptons flood the shrinking space. The fundamental forces join together, one by one, until supersymmetry is restored and the only thing that can be said to exist in this inconceivably hot, dense, chaotic wasteland is him.

God he may or not be, the darkness is terrifying. The silence is maddening,  _tick tick ticking_  slowly backwards, every second dragging out like a lifetime as the moments fly their way back to the moment beyond which there will be no more moments. But worst of all is the solitude. It's crippling in a way ten thousand years alone in Atlantis' own darkness and silence had somehow managed not to prepare him for.

For an interminable eternity, he rages his way into oblivion, striking out with everything he has, trying anything to be free of this torture. But nothing he does has any effect on the darkness. Creation only grows darker and he grows weaker.

He is so alone.

He is so alone, but he can see it all so clearly now – all the things that were, that weren't; that never could be. There's no creator, no purpose, no origin. The universe only exists because it could not stand its own silence. It filled itself with noise and light and laughter and love, love, love, and Iohannes lost everything that mattered because he forgot knowledge is not wisdom, strength is not power, and ability is not right. He set out to save the universe, and has ended up destroying it instead.

He's wasted all his chances, throwing them away one after another for fleeting ideas and momentary snatches of power. But what he wouldn't give for one last chance, one last attempt to make it right.

* * *

**9 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Evan leans forward in his chair, putting his elbows on the table. The sleeves of his robe – not one of John's, but in the same black-on-black style, only different in it's simplistic, almost perfunctory silver embroidery – fall back, revealing the cuts and scrapes he's received over the last few days in the repair efforts are taking place across the city. There are a lot of jagged edges and a lot of shattered glass. None of them, not even their new  _imperator_ , have been able to escape unscathed.

"The same as before: medicines for IHC and ammunition for our weapons."

"You're not exactly in a position to be making those kinds of demands, Major-"

" _Imperator_ ," Evan corrects, surprising the General. The Terrans always seem to forget that Evan's not the by the book solider they seem to think he is. He'd never played by the book – or, at least, not a book that the SGC would recognise. He's just better at pretending he is. "The Air Force stripped me of my rank when they dropped me from the rolls, remember? I was  _heres_  while Icarus was alive, legally recognized as his chosen son and heir by the people of the two hundred and twenty-seven planets that make up the Confederation. Now I am  _imperator_."

"Question still stands, though," Jackson says, taking up the thrust of the conversation. "This Confederation is only held together by virtue of the fact that the people of those two hundred and twenty-seven planets thought John was their living god. With him gone, all of that falls apart."

Radek shakes his head. "I will admit that may have been the case once, but in the eight months he was _imperator_ , he managed to build foundations of an empire that could far outlive him. Atlantis has become interplanetary trading hub – an economic and cultural centre, in addition to governmental seat. While planets could easily leave the Confederation now that their impetus to join is gone, the fact remains that there is more incentive to stay than leave."

"And," Evan adds, leaning back in his chair now, "we still have spaceships, as well as an army that can actually go up against the Wraith."

It's Sam's turn to shake her head. "I thought you were the one looking to  _prevent_  a war."

"All I'm looking to do is protect my people. I won't come after Earth – but you've got to promise me you won't try to take Atlantis. If you try, if you succeed, you'll doom this galaxy. We have a duty here. If we abandon them, the Wraith will kill them all before moving on to your galaxy and doing to you what they've done to us for the last ten thousand years."

"Earth is your home, Major," the General says, ignoring Evan's earlier injunction. "You were born there, remember?"

To his own surprise, Rodney finds himself interjecting, "But it's not home," before Evan can form a reply. "You're the one's that don't understand. You want to come here and, and  _mine_  this city for science and technology and anything it takes to keep you at the top heap now that the Ori and the Asgard and goa'uld are gone. But Atlantis isn't just a  _city_ , something you can just strip for parts and abandon, she's our  _home_. She's  _sentient_  and  _alive_  and her secrets are hers to share, not for you to steal. That's why John spent ten thousand years in the Control Chair. It's why he gave his life to bring her here."

* * *

**{?} – The Higher Planes**

Then something wonderful happens.

Iohannes could not say what, for even with the unconstrained knowledge of the Alteran race at his fingertips, his understanding of the more complex concepts still leaves much to be desired – another way he should have known he is not a god, he reminds himself, tucking the thought away until such a time as enough carbon exists for there to be coals to rake himself over. All he knows is, one second the universe is collapsing in on itself, undoing thirteen point seven nine eight billion years of history as the whole of creation hurtles headlong back to the start, the next the Big Bang is (for lack of a better word) _banging_.

Gravity breaks away from the other fundamental forces. It is quickly followed by the strong nuclear force, and suddenly things have mass and charge and flavour and colour. Matter, in all its forms, springs into being, and soon there are stars and quasars, galaxies and superclusters – and planets, so many planets.

He watches life arise on Loegria, the first life ever to come into existence anywhere in the universe, and watches it evolve and change through the ages until it gives rise to the Alteran race. They are bumbling fools at first, worse than even the Terrans, but they are young still and the most complex organism the universe has yet to see.

They are the universe experiencing itself for the very first time.

Under Iohannes' watchful eye, his ancestors evolve from hunter-gatherers, learn language, tell stories; invent gods in the wind and the water and the stars above. He looks on as Cambria and Cornubia (the two great nation-states that would come to so define – and destroy – that beautiful blue world) carve themselves out of land that until then borne no name, and he finds himself not quite so lonely anymore.

He is there with all the great thinkers, at their sides as they build upon the knowledge that will one day take them to the stars. He is beside all the great kings, standing with them as they build the empires that will all but destroy their race. He is invoked by every priest, the thousand names of their hundred gods meant for him alone, and is strengthened by the prayers of all the faithful, even as they rape and pillage and burn in his differing names.

He swears he has learned his lesson this time. He swears he won't intervene.

So he watches massacres and wars. So he watches young men be torn apart by dogs. So he watches children shut in the dark and the cold, crying out to their gods to protect them. So he watches the raping and pillaging and the burning done in his name – and it takes all he has, but Iohannes does nothing.

It's not his place, no matter how loudly they cry out for their  _sweet, merciful god_ to save them.

It's not.

It's not.

It's not.

* * *

**9 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

No one's particularly pleased when General O'Neill says he wants Colonel Telford to come back as the Head of the new Expedition – not just remain the military commander, but  _the_  Head – but Radek kicks him under the table before Rodney can make too much of a protest. For one thing, there are other things that are worth their protesting – the medicine, for one, and the various bits and bobs they'll need to keep the Argosy running now that John's not around to pull raw minerals out of the ground with the force of his mind. For another, Radek kicks  _hard_.

Still, they're distracted by the conversation, so none of them notice the figure that suddenly appears in the doorway until he says, "No," with a firmness that is entirely belayed by the way he staggers forward, clutching at the table for support before  _slumping_  into the nearest chair like his legs have turned to jelly. "Anyone but Telford."

"John," Rodney breathes, sure that he's hallucinating.

"Hey Rodney," he says quietly, not quite daring to look at him. "Long time, no see."

This, of course, is the wrong thing to say, because it's been, " _Two weeks_. You've been gone  _two weeks_ and  _that's_  all you've got to say?" He doesn't hear the scraping of his chair as he jumps to his feet nor feels Radek's hand on his arm as he tries to hold him back. "I thought you were  _dead_. Again, I might add, because it's a habit with you. I don't know why I continue to be surprised by it, but I am, and it takes  _ten years_  off my life  _each time_  and all you can say after all that is  _long time, no see_?"

"Sorry," John says, sounding more genuinely sincere than he ever has in his life. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't have a lot of time and I wanted you to know that before I-"

"What the hell do you mean  _you don't have a lot of time_? I just got you back. The others will have to wait-"

"The others are gone," he coughs, voice ragged and rough, like a truck full of sandpaper has driven through his throat. "This form's not stable. I spent most of my energy fixing everything. I don't have enough – didn't have enough – to come back. But I wanted to fix it. I couldn't just – I couldn't just watch."

"What do you mean  _this form's not stable_?" Rodney demands at the same time Jackson asks-

"The others are _gone_?"

\- and Radek presses-

"Fix  _what_?"

John coughs again. "I destroyed the Higher Planes. They," he makes a strange, scrunching motion with his hands. One of them – the one he had used to cover his mouth – is slick and red with blood, "collapsed in on themselves. Kick started the universe. But it wasn't right. I had," a longer coughing fit this time, and he can hear Radek on the comm with Carson, telling the idiot to get down here  _yesterday_ if they wanted to save John, "to fix some things... Things weren't happening like they were supposed to…"

"You're not making any sense, John." Sam says, because she knows just as well as Rodney does that, if what John is saying is true, he  _essentially created the universe_ , because the spontaneous "curling up" of the seven higher dimensions M-theory requires to work is one of the theories for how the Big Bang got started, which is beyond ridiculous, if not outright impossible, for any number of reasons.

"I did what I could. I made sure enough of my people got off Loegria to keep the Alteran race alive... I kept the  _Haeretici_  from following the Caravan to Avalon… Made sure there was a fissure in the ice so that the rescue teams wouldn't have to dig to find you in Antarctica… Couldn't stop myself though, no matter how much I wanted to. Nothing I tried worked..."

Rodney kneels down in front of him, taking his blood-slick hands. He's still angry with John for taking his memories – there aren't words to describe how angry he is – but he still loves John. He still can't bear to watch him die  _again_  on his watch. "John-" he begins, but John's not having any of it. He always has to have the last word.

This time it's a whispered, "Please understand," that barely precedes a flood of forgotten thoughts flowing haphazardly up his arm.

Instinctively Rodney breaks away, but it's too late: the thoughts are there, piecing themselves piece by undeniable piece until it's all there. Everything that John took from him – every discovery of his betrayal, every acknowledgement of the depth of his fall – is back along with faint, disjointed memories that were never his to begin with.

His head spins. It's more than he can take, even with the new, upgraded Devices in his brain. Images of burning planets and sobbing children and whispers on the wind fill his mind and dissipate as quickly as they came. And when he can finally open his eyes again-

"There's massive internal bleeding," Carson says. "We've got to get him into surgery fast or we're going to lose him." He spares only a second to ask, "How did this happen? I thought he was bloody Ascended?"


	5. Vir, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vir means man. It also has vaguely military overtones, in the sense than men can refer to soldier, as well as mankind, but I mostly mean man here. 2) Everything you ever wanted to know about Davidus Constantin. 3) Justinianus and Tribonianus are Justinian I and Tribonian, responsible for the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is the basis for most Western law. 4) I think that's everything.

**15 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Consciousness comes slowly, in jerking fits and starts that gain him one foot of traction and cost him two more, but it does come. It brings pain in its wake, the sharpest edges dulled by exhaustion and analgesics, but still almost enough to push him back over the edge into oblivion. He struggles through it, clawing his way towards consciousness the way others might scale a cliff or tear down a fortress wall, and eventually wakes.

Opening his eyes is a herculean task. Iohannes cannot remember the last time his eyelids had so much weight. They are barely two millimetres of flesh and blood and nerves. They should not be like tungsten curtains across his eyes. They should not need this much effort to lift, but he manages it, if only barely, and through the sliver of light make out a blur of cornflower and turquoise and southern skies, mixed through with streaks of ruby and gold.

_The hospital tower_ , he thinks, recognizing the mosaics Carson had so carefully installed before they'd opened the Imperial Heathcare Centre.  _I'm in the intensive care wing of the hospital tower. Why?_

"What happened?" he asks, the words little more than a thin, weak rasp that can barely find their way to his own ears, let alone anyone else's. So it's a surprise when he get's a reply so sharp and cutting that he can all but feel the barbs digging into his skin-

"You mean  _after_  you went into cardiac arrest on the Conference Room floor?"

"Yes," Iohannes breathes around a shaky, dry cough that makes his lungs burn. "That's probably a good place to start."

Fingers push a chip of ice between his lips before, still cold and wet, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead. "You went into cardiac arrest on the Conference Room floor. Your heart wasn't getting enough oxygen – which, I might add, is entirely  _your_  fault. If you were going to Descend, you could at least have taken the time to put yourself together properly. You're mortal now. That means you  _die_  if your lungs have more holes in them than a Marine brigade's socks."

Iohannes manages the slightest of smiles. "I missed you too, buddy."

Through the slits of his eyes, he catches the look of fond exasperation Rodney gives him. "They had to operate on you more times than I can count. They had to sew up the holes in your lungs and take out part of one of the lobes, not to mention get your heart beating again.  _That,_  at least, is working correctly, but the rest of you… Your bones are more brittle than they were before. You managed to break both your fibulas and one of your tibias when you hit the floor; you've got five titanium pins in your legs now. Be glad Pegasus isn't as fond of metal detectors as Terran airports. Three of your ribs are fractured and one of them so shattered that Doctor Biro's not even sure she got out all the pieces out. More of your organs have been stitched back together than I would care to name… And, of course, you've been in here so long I wouldn't be surprised if you've got a terminal case of bed sores, which is no more than you deserve for doing this to us."

Iohannes feels the corners of his mouth twitch upward. Things can't be all that bad if Rodney's taking the time to insult him between explanations. "How long?"

"How long have you been in this hospital bed or how long were you missing, presumed  _dead_  you ungrateful, heart attack inducing  _moron_?"

"Either. Both."

"You turned to dust on the twenty-ninth of June – thank you for that nightmare, by the way. As for how long you've been unconscious, you came back a week ago – and I mean a week Earth-time; we're still trying to figure out what to do about the local calendar. It's a little… different than what we were used to."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, I suppose it was too much to hope that you'd keep other peoples' sleep cycles in mind in the midst of your delusions. At least it's a habitable planet – though did you know there's giant species of venomous snakes on the southern islands? A whole genus of them, actually. The biologists have already declared eighty percent of what passes for the mainland as a out-of-bounds."

"I'm sorry for that too."

"I sincerely doubt you  _meant_  to put us on a planet with man-sized killer snakes."

"Not for the snakes."

Rodney huffs and feeds him another ice chip as if to avoid an immediate answer. "I'm still angry at you about that, you know."

"But you're here."

"Yes, well," Rodney stammers, staring down at the cup of ice he holds rather than meet Iohannes' gaze, "you may be an idiot, but you're  _my_  idiot, so…"

"I love you," he tells him.

He can feel Rodney's hand on his face as unconsciousness drags him back under, his words, "I know," following him into his dreams.

* * *

Even so, his dreams are not dreams. They're not even nightmares. They're memories he cannot shake, visions he should never have seen; sights he should never have witnessed.

But the mind is a resilient thing, especially the Alteran mind. It can bury even the most horrific memories so deep that even it can become blind to the secrets it hides - particularly when doing so is the only way to maintain a grasp, however slight, on sanity.

But nothing can stay hidden forever.

* * *

**16 July, 2007**

"The office suites you."

Evan looks up, surprised but not startled to find Icarus darkening his office door. "I heard you'd escaped from the ICU. What are you doing here?"

"Can't an old man visit his son at work every now and then?"

The look on Evan's face must say it all, because Icarus' own falls before he says-

"Yeah, I've not exactly been a shining example of parenthood lately, have I? I've yet to con you into helping me build weapons of mass destruction, so I suppose I've still got one up on Father, but definitely not Parent of the Year material." He pauses, breathing heavily for long moment before continuing somewhat musingly, "You remind me so much of your grandfather."

"I remind you of Janus?"

"No, not Father," he chuckles as he staggers gracelessly into the room, "though you have the look about you. I mean my half-brother, your five hundred thirtieth great-grandfather, Davidus Constantin. You remind me of him."

"It's my understanding that he was born after you went into stasis."

By this point, Icarus has made it over to the overdesigned monstrosity that the Ancients called a couch. He collapses on it, his skin ashen even from a distance and coated with enough sweat to make his hair cling, seemingly unnoticed, to his face. This is a man who has just spent a week in ICU, who has rebuilt his body from moonbeams and fairy dust and half-remembered biology lessons and it shows. Evan can barely imagine how he got out of bed in as much pain as he must be in, let alone made it all the way across the city to this office.

Still, Icarus shrugs, answering nothing.

Eventually he says, "I wasn't lying, y'know. The office does suit you."

"You're just saying that because it gets me to do all your paperwork."

" _Your_  paperwork now. You're  _imperator_ , which means the bureaucracy is yours to deal with – which may be the one good thing to come out of all of this."

This is enough to startle Evan way from his paperwork – a checklist, really, of things that Gate teams are and are not allowed to trade for supplies from off-world, which has only been slightly modified from the earliest days of the First Expedition – and to his feet. "Look, we thought you were dead. I did what I had to do. But like it or not, the stability of this Confederation depends on you – on you being their living god."

"Yes, and  _that_ worked out so well for all us, " Icarus snaps, his voice sharper and more forceful than should be possible from someone in his condition. "Look," he continues, all strength having left his voice but none of the conviction, "I'm not a good person. We all saw what happened when I was given power: It destroyed me. It nearly destroyed everything I've ever cared about. If the Asurans hadn't attacked, I've no doubt things would not have worked out as bloodless as they did.

"But you… that other Davidus was a good man, a kind man. Genes like his, he could have conquered his known world if he wanted, but instead he brought a hundred years of peace to his region and laid the foundations for what would become the basis for most Terran legal code, though Justinianus and Tribonianus would get all the credit for it."

"And this is the man I remind you of?"

"A better man than I," Icarus agrees readily.

Evan finds himself at a loss. He's-

-standing behind his desk – the one that had until had until last month been Icarus', all glass and sleek lines, designed to impress and intimidate – his fingertips gripping and smudging the edge. His high-backed chair skid into the shelves behind when he stood, tipping over some of books and rattling one or two of the knickknacks left over from Doctor Weir's tenure that had found their way into this new office.

-three million light years from the planet he was born on. The alien who adopted him has recently returned from the dead and is now curled up on his couch, shivering despite the tropical breeze floating through the window and the borrowed robe wrapped tightly about him. Until he heard him alter McKay's memories, he would have died for the man; he'd already given up so much for him, giving up his life seemed the natural next step. But since then he's heard Icarus name himself a god and threaten everything they both hold dear. Evan doesn't know if he'll ever be able trust Icarus ever again.

-lost his past. He's loosing his future too. Radek has become distant since their arrival on this planet. Between Rodney's all-consuming grief and their recent relocation, his own  _amator_  had a ready excuse for why they can't spare more than five minutes alone together. Evan had been willing to accept this at first – work always will come before everything else with them – but now that things have started to die down, Radek has continued to pull away. It's as if seeing all the harm Rodney and Icarus are capable of causing each other has only encouraged Radek's absurd idea that they shouldn't let themselves become to close to each other. In fact, Evan's almost certain that Radek is going to put an end to any closeness before much longer.

-at a loss, and the only friend he has left – the only person in the universe with any hope of understanding what he's been through – is the one responsible for it all. He wants to believe that Icarus is himself again, but some part of him can't help but feel that this is all a setup. Sheppard may be mortal once more but that doesn't mean he's stopped being dangerous. Indeed, he remains the single most dangerous being in the universe. He's always been smarter than he appears and clearly remembers some things from his time as an Ascended being.

Icarus could be playing them. He could be setting himself up to Ascend again, this time with a stronger powerbase and fully-fledged delusions of godhood. He  _had_  said something about  _kick-starting the universe_  before he'd passed out, which is clearly something no sane person would ever do.

But maybe, just maybe, Icarus really has seen the error in his ways and, if he's taking responsibility for his crimes, who is Evan to deny him his chance at redemption simply because he fears he could be wrong?

Sheppard's never been a man to make the same mistake twice.

In the end, Evan does the only thing he  _can_ do, which is open one of the bottom shelves and pull out a blanket pre-emptively squirrelled away from occasions like these, but Icarus is already fast asleep.

Evan throws the blanket over him and lets him stay.

* * *

But his sleep is not easy. There's no violent thrashing, no shouted words in long dead languages, but only an idiot could look at him and not tell that  _something_ 's wrong.

He steps out of the office to quietly call Doctor Beckett and let him know where his errant patient is – and where he'll probably require medical attention in the near future, but in the thirty seconds he's gone, Icarus disappears, the crumpled blanket at the foot of the couch the only sign he'd been.

* * *

That night, his own nightmares start.


	6. Vir, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart. Or: Evan's Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) [WWII-era service coat](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-27pX9plg-uE/T5dOLTx93oI/AAAAAAAADJI/H9j7eSUFquI/s1600/450424+Service+Coat.jpg); 2) [Aristaeus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristaeus) is the Greek culture hero responsible for [Eurydice's](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurydice) death in myth. He is said to have invented bee-keeping, trapping, cheese making, animal husbandry, and much more. 3) The various city names of [Cornubia and Cambria](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/194320.html#PreAv) are the latin place names of various English/Welsh cities. 4) [On Evan's family](http://archiveofourown.org/works/749556/chapters/1423734). 5) [This](http://www.amazon.com/Sputnik-Sweetheart-Novel-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0375726055) is the book from the end. I chose it because its quite good, but also because it has a title that I think Rory might reasonably think implies B-rate Science Fiction, rather than a postmodern surrealist romance. Those familiar with the work might also conclude she's trying to tell him something.

**{?} – {?}**

In the beginning, it doesn't feel like a nightmare. It doesn't even feel like a real dream. All he knows is one moment he's laying in bed, trying not to fall asleep after a night of the best sex he's ever had because it felt too much like goodbye and he doesn't want this to be the end, and the next he's standing in an underground bunker that reminds him far too much of the SGC.

It's a bit of a jarring transition, not winning his brain any cinematography awards, and at first he thinks it's just his mind's way of coping with all the stress he's been under. After all, the Third Expedition is coming to Atlantis in two days and there's still so much for him to do, so many personnel files for him to read. Add to that the fact that, between the abandonment and the betrayals, the SGC has become the monster under his bed, and, well, nightmare about what the Air Force will do to him if he ever sets foot on Earth is just what he needs to make this day even better.

(Believe it or not, there was a time in the not so distant past when he slept nightmare-free, but that was another Expedition ago.)

Evan starts to realize things aren't all as they seem the moment he realizes it's  _not_  the SGC he's standing in or even a reasonable dream-facsimile of it. Don't get him wrong, it's definitely a nuclear fallout bunker and there's probably a military presence around somewhere, but the tunnels walls are angled more sharply than they are at the SGC and the coloured lines running the length of the halls and the bare pipes overhead have markings in a language he doesn't immediately recognize.

He'd write it all off as dream gibberish, the flotsam and jetsam of a busy mind, except it doesn't  _feel_  like a dream. Hell, it feels more real than some days he's had of late, but that doesn't mean he wants to stick around.

Just because he's lucid, though, doesn't mean he has any more control over his actions than he would if this were a normal dream. He tries to search for the exits and instead finds himself walking deeper into the underground warren of tunnels and unmarked doors, and eventually gives up looking for an escape route and decides just to play along. It's only a dream after all. No matter how strange it may seem, it's only a dream. So he returns the salutes of the few people he sees in the halls – all of them military, wearing what could possibly have passed for a World War Two-era service coat and slacks if they hadn't been ultramarine instead of the usual khaki – and swallows down the panic building within him.

All his walking leads to a door.

On the other side of the door is an office hardly bigger than a broom cupboard with a single desk, a single chair, and a desk lamp illuminating a computer terminal that looks like it was pulled straight out of  _2001_. Evan has no idea why his dream has brought him here, but his dream-self is filled with purpose. He flips switches and turns dials with practiced ease, so focused on his work that he manages to miss the heavy vault door open and close behind him.

"Just what do you think you're doing, Aristaeus?"

His dream-self spins around.  _Icarus_ , he wants to say, glad despite everything that's happened to see him. He may be terrified that his adoptive father's going to betray them again – that he's  _still_  betraying them, that somewhere deep inside him, Icarus still thinks himself a god and will move whole worlds to become one again, - but Icarus always knows what to do. He fixes things. He moves heaven and earth to bring everyone home. Despite everything that's happened, Evan still wants to believe that's true.

But that's not what he says.

Instead, in a voice he doesn't immediately recognize as his own, he says, "I have my orders, sir."

"The only person you should be taking orders from,  _tribunus_ , is me."

"This comes down directly from the Council. They know you have lost your stomach for the realities of war, so they gave the job to someone they could trust to get it done: me."

" _The realities of war_ ," Icarus repeats, the very essence of disbelief dripping from his words. "Aristaeus, they're  _hydrogen bombs_. They're not designed for the quick and clean removal of some military target; the only thing they're good for is wanton destruction of anything and everything that lies in their paths. Do you have any idea how many city blocks they will flatten? How many children and civilians they will kill instantly?"

"You know what they did to Cantuaria. You  _saw_  what they did to Vigornia:

"They dragged old men from their homes and shot them in the streets! They ripped infants from their mothers' breasts and threw them into the Salopien Sea! And after they finished raping anyone left alive in the city, they gathered everyone they did not want to drag back in chains inside the cathedral of Iovis Torens, strapped bombs on the youngest of them, and blew the place sky high! The crater was still smoking when our transport landed!

"Do you remember what you said to me that day, sir?  _They must pay for this_. That is all I am trying to do: make sure they pay for what they have done."

"We've done no better," Icarus says quietly.

His dream-self turns away angrily, gripping the desk tightly for one breath, then two, until he can type in the last code needed to arm the warheads with steady hands. "Orders are orders, sir."

"Think about what you're doing, Aristaeus. It's called  _mutually assured destruction_  for a reason. You fire these missiles at Triverium and Dubris and they'll have their own heading to Cantuaria and Vigornia and Llundain before the bombs have even fallen. You do this, and you'll turn Loegria into a radioactive wasteland from which it will never recover. You'll kill eight billion people and doom the survivors to wandering the stars for the rest of eternity. We'll never rest. We'll never stop. We'll never forgive ourselves. We'll spend the rest of history trying to make up for what you're about to do."

Icarus is desperate, his voice just a shade shy of pleading – a tone Evan has never heard him use, not even with Rodney when he was trying to convince him of his innocence not so long ago. But Evan's dream-self – Aristaeus – doesn't care. He simply presses the return key, the last step needed to deploy the six missiles this launch control centre houses, and seals them all to their fate.

It takes Icarus a second to realize what's happening. Indeed, no lights or sirens activate to tell the world what his dream-self has just done, but the look of utter devastation that crosses his face is telling enough. He throws a hand into the air, ruin twisting into resolve as he attempts something Evan cannot see but causes the telemetry readings to go crazy – the missiles are turning, speeding up, hurling themselves rapidly into space where their effects will be severely negated.

The sensors pick up something else too: the enemy, whoever they may be, has already begun launching their own missiles in retaliation. They too start to turn, but there are too many, coming from all corners of the globe, and Icarus cannot hold it.

He loses control.

The missiles come hurtling back to earth, detonating where they land.

And that's when the real nightmare begins.

* * *

**17 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Point of fact: Evan has never been religious. His dog tags, his original set, say  _CATHOLIC_ , because his father came from a long line of lapsed Roman Catholics and it was easier to put down a religion – any religion – than none at the time. After the stigma had faded, he'd never bothered to update them. It just hadn't mattered, even when he was filling out forms naming his half-sister Robin his next of kin and ticking all the little boxes on the forms that asked what kind of funeral he wanted if he a) died in service of the SGC and b) his body could be returned to his family c) without needing to be cremated to protect state secrets.

After he'd been read-in on he existence of alien beings that called themselves gods (lowercase  _g_ ) and been adopted by a being who called himself God (uppercase  _g_ ), Evan had continued to feel no particular religious inclination, either for or against. The goa'uld are only gods in the  _any sufficiently advanced technology_ sense. Even The Ascended Ancients, to include both Icarus and the Ori, are only  _sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligences_ and their powers, while undeniable, had still fallen short of actual divinity.

If pressed, Evan would have defined  _actual divinity_  as  _utter indifference to any and all of the universe's inhabitants_.

His logic is this:

God, by more conventional definitions, is conceived to be omniscient, omnipotent, and eternal. As such, there is nothing that humans (being rather ignorant, incapable, and transient in comparison) could ever do that might interest said God.

It is not until he wakes up, drenched in sweat and biting back a scream, that it occurs to Evan that the opposite of a disinterested God is an attentive Devil, and that no being had ever been as interested in humanity as Icarus was before his Fall.

* * *

Second fact: Evan rarely, if ever, remembers his dreams. And he's certainly never woken up, drenched in sweat and biting back a scream, from one either. That this one pulls out all the stops – from rapid pulse to heavy breaths to thrashing about the bed like a man possessed – is only a side bonus.

* * *

Lastly: The bunks aboard  _Aurora_  are not designed for tossing  _or_  turning, especially when more than one person occupies them.

* * *

He hits the floor hard.

Rory winces audibly – a riot of sour notes in the middle of an achingly beautiful coronach for lost Lantea, lost Loegria, and all the other homeworlds that are homes no more – and trails a gentle melody over the edges of his mind, as if to soothe away all his pain. As young as she can seem, her maternal streak has grown a mile wide between everything that's happened of late. It makes her seem older. Already he misses the child she once was.

Sometimes he feels like the universe is changing around him and he's the only one standing still. Rory grows up. Icarus betrays them. Radek looks for ways to leave him.

/Are you hurt?/ she asks, her words a smooth whisper of silk and sitar.

Evan doesn't answer for a long while. Part of it is because he cannot remember how to make his voice work – his throat feels red, raw, useless; destroyed by silent screaming as the fires in his dreams hit, burning and consuming everything that lay in their paths. The rest is because he's having a hard time believing that he is actually awake. His dream had felt so real – real to the extent that he can still feel the radiation leaching into his skin – and reality seems so much like a dream.

/Argathelianus?/ she calls out, nudging his thoughts a little more firmly.

"I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked," Radek says uncharacteristically sharply, "though is good to know."

Evan stifles a groan. He loves Radek, he really, truly does, but sometimes talking to him is like walking blindfolded and barefoot into a minefield. Sure, there's a way through it, but even if they find it everybody comes out feeling singed at the end. "Sorry. What was it you were saying?"

"I asked if there was any ice on this ship."

"Shit." He scrambles to his feet, deciding to contribute the spots that flare before his eyes to Rory having chosen that that same moment to raise the lights to fifty percent. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Your elbow clipped me, I'll be fine. Is there any ice?"

"I don't think so. We can check Rory's infirmary, but I don't think ice was anywhere on the Ancient's list of standard medical equipment."

His  _amator_  hums. "What about you? You fell. Did you break anything?"

"Only my pride." His hand hovers over the Radek still holds to the right side of his face. "Let me see?"

"Perhaps you should,  _ah_ ," Radek hisses as he lowers his hand. It's all Evan can do not to hiss himself, unwilling to admit but unable to deny that  _he_  caused the rude red bruise that is rapidly swelling the eye closed, "invest in railing. "

"Or," he suggests mirthlessly, "a bigger bed."

"There are plenty of beds in the city."

The memory of the dream is still too close to the surface Evan to even begin to parse the meaning of his words. They could just as easily be an invitation to Radek's bed as a reminder that he is  _imperator_  now, mortal, and lacking in an heir. "We should get you to the IHC," Evan says instead.

"Is not my first black eye, Evan."

"I might have broken something."

"Nothing is broken. All I need is ice and ibuprofen."

"You're not that kind of doctor, Radek."

Sighing, Radek slips past him and starts picking up the clothes that had, invariably, ended up in a pile halfway between the bed and the door. Evan's offered to let Radek keep an extra set in his quarters for occasions like these, but he won't have it. They have known each other in the most intimate ways possible, but allowing their processions to intermingle is a bridge too far. He'd rather wear yesterday's wrinkled clothing than admit that what they're in love with each other.

Evan thinks its love, anyway. Radek's never said a word either way.

"I'll get Carson to take a look. But," he adds, rather more forcefully then someone with a black eye should be able, "you stay here."

"Radek-"

"I know you've not been sleeping. The next two days before the Expedition arrives are going to be busy. Get some sleep while you can."

"Radek,"  _I'm not going to sleep. I'm not going to sleep ever again. I saw eight billion people die on a world I never set foot on but which felt like more of a home than Earth ever did all the same. Only two billion perished in the initial blast, but fire took care of the rest, and radiation, and the black rain. And for the unlucky few who managed to live through that hellish trifecta, well, the movies did not do the horror of nuclear winter justice. Starvation, dehydration, and disease took the rest, and I saw it all with my waking eyes._

"Evan," he counters, the corners of his lips twitching into a smile.

"Please."  _I held the blackened and charred hands of strangers as they died. I saw children too weak to cry as they lay in the arms of the mothers I had killed. I watched the living eat the dead for lack of alternative. Amid the chaos and the madness and the savagery, I somehow managed to stay untouched, the sole witness to the end of a civilization._ "I love you and I did this-"

Radek's quick peck silences his protests. "I can take care of myself," he says when he pulls back, "and you need sleep."

"I know-" Evan begins, but Radek is already out the door.

He should go after him. It's the right thing to do – the thing he  _wants_  to do – but Radek doesn't want his company and showing up at the infirmary will only serve to irritate him and hasten the ending that has been threatening ever since Evan gave the first indication their relationship means something to him.

But Evan has never known when to quit, when to cut his losses. Drawing things out will only extend the pain of the breakup over weeks, until his heart is worn raw and damaged beyond all repair.

He doesn't know how he's supposed to do this – any of this. He loves Atlantis and Radek and Rory. He loves this galaxy and his job and the people he works with. But he doesn't know how he can do what needs to be done and keep everyone he loves at the same time.

/Argathelianus?/ Rory asks tentatively after he's sat on the edge of the bed for some indeterminable eternity, unable and unwilling to do anything beyond simmer in his own folly. He needs to get up. He needs to do something. He needs to start acting like an adult with responsibilities and not… Not whatever it is he is now.

"Yeah, Rory?"

/We know you are busy, but…/

"But what?" Evan asks tiredly.

/Will you read to us, like you used to?/

It's not the question he was expecting. His ascent falls from his lips before he even thinks to look at the time. "I don't think I have anything laying around you've not heard before, though."

/ _Mater_  has thousands of Terran books in her databases./

"Of course she does," he says, standing abruptly. It takes him a moment to find a tablet with most of its charge, but find one he does before returning to the bed. "Pick one and download it to-" The tablet dings as the download finishes. "Alright then. Let's see what we're reading today:

" _Sputnik Sweethearts_  by Haruki Murakami. Chapter One. ' _In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains – flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits…_ '"


	7. Vir, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It has been a struggle to conform it into a narrative, and I'm still not sure it actually manages to move the plot forward in any way anyone but me understand, but I am at the publish or pluck-out-my-own-eyes stage of things, so...   
> 1) Check out Atlantis' (very long) soundtrack. 2) The Schutzstaffel is more commonly known as the SS. 3) Msemen is a Moroccan breakfast food. 4) I think that's it, but this was mostly written in the last two days, so... let me know if there's something grievously wrong.

**19 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Looking back, Evan will never quite understand how he makes it through the six weeks on either side of Icarus' delinquent apotheosis and precipitous Fall. Icarus had done the impossible in moulding a Confederation from such a disparate galaxy, but what he had held built with charisma and charm, Evan barely manages to hold together through sleep deprivation and sheer force of will.

Bolstered by his newfound decision never to sleep again, he ploughs through three Loegrian days without rest, completing paperwork, reading backlogged files, and even contributing three hours to the effort to track down whatever hole Icarus had crawled into following his flight from Evan's office some days previous. Atlantis proves captiously stubborn regarding the last, refusing to give up her longest serving  _pastor_  but willing to reassure the remainder that Icarus is both alive and in relative good health. Its worrisome in the extreme, but without the city's help they have no hope of finding Icarus if he doesn't want to be found, and so they all have to resign themselves to the state of affairs, such as it is.

Still, there is only so long that the human body can go without sleep, and by the time the Third Expedition is set to arrive, Evan is tired, irritable, and in no state to deal with the politicking required to hold a civil conversation with anyone from Terra these days. Even so, he is the least of all possible evils, which is why he's the one leaning against the balcony of the otherwise empty Gate Room, waiting for the SGC to dial in, rather than anyone else.

He glances at his watch, set to Terran time until they can figure out what to do about Nova Loegria's twenty-one hour days. He's still got ten minutes before they're supposed to dial in, but Evan's so tired, it might as well be an eternity. As much as he doesn't want to sleep ever again, he's rapidly reaching the point where soon he'll have no choice.

Maybe he just needs to rest his eyes. He's bound to catch his second wind soon…

* * *

**{?} – {?}**

The rain falls steadily in long, straight streaks, an unwavering curtain of wet and grey that makes examination of his surroundings impossible. The earth is equally wet and grey, anything noteworthy having been stamped out of it long ago by a hundred thousand feet. Those same feet have churned the mud to a thin, even consistency that can slip through even the sturdiest of boots in a downpour like this.

The floorboards creak under his feet as Evan hurries his way to the open door, practically groaning when he stomps his feet against the already sodden mat. His boots – the sturdiest of makes, pebbled-leather running calf-high and the soles hobnailed by the best manufacturer on the continent – squeak and squelch as he makes his way further into the building. He does his best to ignore the sound, walking quickly to his destination: a door, no more interesting than any of the others on the hall.

 _This is a dream_ , Evan thinks.  _I'm asleep in the Control Room. It will be a miracle if I don't fall off the balcony._

The knowledge that this is only a dream doesn't help Evan much. Indeed, if anything, this one feels even more real than the one that came before. Evan can feel the chill in the air this time, smell the must of damp wool; trace the path of raindrops down his neck and under his collar. He thinks, if he allowed himself, he could forget himself entirely – forget that this is only a dream and slip into his dream-self's skin without ever remembering this it isn't real.

This time, he knocks on the door.

"Come in," says the voice on the other side.

Evan opens it and steps through. Inside, behind a great wooden desk, surrounded by sepia-toned maps and violent red banners, is Icarus, wearing the grey-green uniform of the  _Schutzstaffel_.

* * *

**19 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Evan jerks awake violently, nearly tumbling over the railing as the Gate activates. He's hardly managed to catch his breath before the SGC comes over the comm, requesting permission to send the Third Expedition through.

He grants it, heart pounding in his chest, and goes down the stairs to greet them.

* * *

"That," Rodney says definitively, fixing the rounded tip of his spoon at him, "is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"I doubt that," Radek snorts, poking at his own breakfast rather less eagerly. "Weren't you telling me just yesterday about Doctor Durand's solution to our twenty-one hour day problem?"

Rodney makes a noise of both consideration and contempt. "The universe is full of idiots, all of them bent and determined on yapping to me about their idiocy. You especially."

"All I said was,  _I do not know_. That is hardly idiocy."

"For the last three days," he says, piling steamed Tava beans onto his  _msemen_ -style pancakes as Radek watches, "every time I've asked you about Evan, your answer has been  _you don't know_ , which can only mean you're avoiding him. Avoiding the person you're in love with is where the idiocy comes in."

"I'm not -" he begins, loudly and abruptly, before cutting himself off. He glances quickly down the table, but the only other occupant in the Émigré's wardroom is Doctor Che, who is too busy blinking tiredly into her coffee cup to pay attention to what's going on at the other end of the table, if she even recognizes there's anyone else in the room at all. "I'm not," Radek continues in more sombre tones, "in love with Evan."

This earns him an amused snort this time. "Keep telling yourself that."

Undeterred, "We have an understanding, that's all."

"Is  _that_  what the kids are calling it these days?"

"Is not like that," he insists.

Radek has spent years watching Rodney's relationship with the Colonel evolve, having guessed where it would take them long before either admitted to their own feelings. Even at the beginning, there had something grand and fated about it – how could there not be, with a pair like them, Sheppard the last living Ancient and Rodney the scientific successor of Gauss and Euler? Impossible, the both of them, and yet-

They live like they're the only people alive, circling about each other in a tight orbit of furious living and vicious certainty that will one day be the death of them all. It's  _already_  killed them, though luck alone had kept it from taking. It's dangerous and destructive and not everyone can live like that, dragged though life on waves of passion only to drown the moment it all catches up with them. Most people need stability, safety, certainty. Love... Love is dangerous.

Love only gets people hurt.

"Our lives are not safe," he continues. "We could die, any of us, at any time. Better not to make promises that we cannot keep than…"  _then carry on like you do whenever one of us inevitably dies,_ Radek does not say, though Rodney can follow his argument, however unspoken, easily enough.

"Like I said: the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"Since when are you an expert?"

"I'll have you know-" he begins, only to cut himself off abruptly with a, "John!"

Radek turns. To his amazement, it  _is_  the Colonel. He's about ten pounds lighter than when he saw him last, his face gaunt and skin pale where it is not deeply shadowed. His blood red robes, stolen from Doctor Beckett's office, only intensifies his look of malaise, as does the cane he leans heavily upon as he makes for their end of the table.

"Hey guys," he says, clapping a hand on Radek's shoulder to balance himself as he collapses into the chair on his right. "I'm starving. Pass me a plate, will you?"

" _I'm starving_ , he says," Rodney huffs, working himself into a state of mild dudgeon but pushing his own half-finished plate in his husband's direction. "Three days you've been missing this time. I'm half tempted to put a bell on you or chip you or something."

"Kinky," is the Colonel's only answer to this, rolling up the remains of Rodney's pancakes and Tava beans into a burrito. "Hand me the, well, hand me everything."

"I'm sorry, are we just going to ignore the fact that you thought it would be a good idea to go traipsing around the abandoned areas of the city with  _two_ broken legs,  _three_  fractured ribs, and a  _quarter_  of your lungs left on the operating room floor?"

"I fixed the ribs," he says before taking a tentative bite of his breakfast, after which he makes a noise Radek is, frankly, embarrassed to hear. If he weren't so curious, he'd find a way to excuse himself before this gets vulgar. " _Alimenta_ ," the Colonel continues reverently. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since I had actual  _food_?"

"A year or so."

"Try almost twenty seven billion. It'd forgotten thins could  _taste_."

"John," Rodney says, waning in patience, "the universe isn't that old."

Polishing off Rodney's breakfast, Sheppard holds up two fingers, swallows with apparent difficulty, and reaches for the platter of  _msemen_ -pancakes. "I went through it twice," he informs them obliquely, the majority of his attention on his meal rather than his dining companions. "Pass me the butter, will you?"

Radek passes the butter. The Colonel, he notes, doesn't bother with the pretence of a plate this time, taking the full platter for is own.

"How?"

"The Higher Planes collapsed when I killed the others. Or maybe the others died when I collapsed the Higher Planes. I'm not all too clear on that part," he says matter-of-factly, slathering butter on his pancakes. "I wasn't thinking all that clearly and it was a long time ago now. Is that jam?" The Colonel reaches across the table for what is indeed a jar of preserves, "Either way, it collapsed, which caused history to rewrite itself so that the extra dimensions are all curled up tight instead of vaguely intersecting with this dimension in some hazily defined four-dimensional space."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"No, it doesn't, does it? I've been trying to straighten it all out in my head, but..." he gestures indistinctly with his fork, to no apparent end other than to put droplets of melted butter on the table. "I watched the universe burn and knew I was the cause. It is all my fault. Everything. All the suffering, all the wars, all the death, it is my fault. I am the one responsible for it all, not the Wraith or the  _Haeretici_  or the others: me."

"John-"

The Colonel does not appear to hear. In truth, he doesn't seem to hear anything. His fork falls uselessly from his hand, making a great clatter that has even the under-caffeinated Doctor Che turn their way, but Sheppard doesn't notice. His senses are in another time, another place, and while his eyes don't fade to the white of his Ascension days, they are unfocused as they stare at something that only he can see. "Time ran through my fingers. I could see all the futures my choice could make. A billions billion possible universes filled with knowledge beyond understanding, life beyond wonder, and suffering beyond measure. A glance was enough to find the one that suffered least – the best of all possible worlds – and I chose it and made it so, not daring to interfere for fear I would be the ruin of it all…

"But I couldn't. It was still too much. I tried to stop what I could, but I couldn't. Bombs keep falling. Cities keep burning. People keep dying… I think I went mad for a while, trying to stop it…" He blinks suddenly, as if returning to his senses, and pushes his plate away. "I'm not hungry anymore."


	8. Vir, Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Radek's Czech is, in order: "Alright, let's see if we've got this working," "I think that is it. Unless you have something else for me to fix?", and "Then it is time I called it a night. The sun will be up on a couple hours anyway." 2) The Silver Age. 3) Doctor Bosak is fictional, if based on actual doctors who were conscripted into taking part. Eduard Wirths is not. 4) Feldgendarmerie were German MPs thru WWII. 5) Standortarzt is an SS Chief Medical Officer.

**19 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Atlantis, Radek thinks occasionally, would more rightly have been named The Lonely City. Regardless of the infusion of almost five hundred Terran scientists, Marines, and administrators, the city remains near empty. Her entire population could be housed in one of the medium-sized towers and still have room for their offices and equipment. With space left over.

Doctor Weir had asked once, in the earliest weeks of the First Expedition, how many people Atlantis could hold. He remembers Colonel Sheppard answering – indeed, he remembers being surprised the Ancient had answered at all, for in those days he'd rarely spoken to anyone save Rodney about the past he'd so recently lost – that he was unsure. The city hadn't boasted a full population since the start of what he called  _The Silver Age_  some seventeen million years previous, but she mostly likely could room and board a million people, had Sheppard's ancestors been so inclined.

Personally, Radek thinks Atlantis was never even half that crowded. The Ancients had been a dying race for most of their history. Between war and disease, Ascension and catastrophe, their population had never been able to grow. The only beings Atlantis has ever had many of are ghosts. They linger around ever corner, darken every door. Not actual ghosts, of course, but there are places in Atlantis that seem tainted by lingering psychic scars that science cannot explain. Maybe the walls remember what no one left alive can.

It's a big, wide universe out there. He's seen stranger things.

Even with the population boost, Atlantis feels empty, or at least the parts that Radek, in his own way, haunts. Evan has restricted the Expedition to the East Pier until further arrangements can be made, and Radek spends most of his time on the Southwest, with the empty ships that had once brought doom to Asuras.

He finishes testing the final connection before sliding out from under the master environmental control console.  _Victoria_  and  _Vindicta_  had survived their flight from the besieged city, but not without significant damage, mostly to their electrical systems. Repairing them isn't urgent, not like some of the repairs to Atlantis, but he's always liked to have an escape route on hand if at all possible. Besides, Rodney has those under control. If Radek tried to help, he'd only be sent to work on the water filtration systems.

Again.

" _Dobře_ ," he tells  _Victoria_ , " _uvidíme jestli máme tuto práci._ " He enters a few commands onto the console and then steps back, keeping one eye on the master environmental systems display that takes up most of the side wall and the other on the wires beneath the console itself. No alarms, however, are triggered and none of the wires melt or spark from overloaded circuits.

Radek smiles and pats the console lightly. These ships may not be self aware, as Atlantis and  _Aurora_ are, but that doesn't matter. He's always talked to his tech – computers and life signs detectors, puddle jumpers and car engines, it's never mattered. He holds conversations with them all. He's just never entertained the idea they might be talking back to him.

" _Myslím, že to je. Pokud nemáte něco pro mě opravit?_ " He waits a moment. When nothing in his line of sight obligingly breaks down, he continues, " _Pak je na čase, volal jsem ji v noci. Slunce bude až na pár hodin tak jako tak._ "He should probably sleep.

Sleep.

As much as he should sleep and let his body adjust to this wretched twenty-one hour day they have to contend with on their new homeworld, Radek can't face heading back to his own quarters. They're not that far – just in the other side of the hanger, actually, in the part of the complex where all the old offices and ready rooms for the officers and crew of the  _Tethys_ -class warships used to be, in the days when  _Tethys_ -class warships still existed – but it has been four days now since he's seen Evan. And as patient and understanding and generous as Evan may be, four days is long enough that he'll start looking for him. And Radek doesn't want to be found, not yet. He needs time to get his head straight:

He doesn't love Evan.

He can't love Evan.

He can't loose Evan.

Which is what will happen if he lets himself love him – lose him, that is. Loss is what love is. And maybe, just maybe, if they can keep going like this, they can have the best of both worlds without suffering the consequences when it is brought to an end, as it inevitably will be.

But if that's the case, why does it hurt so much?

Radek ignores the pain. It's better this way. Getting too close will only hurt them in the long run. A little pain now is worth the price if it keeps them from falling apart later, when it really matters. To that end, he doesn't return to his quarters, but goes up to Deck 2 instead. There are a couple of cabins there that he could spend the night in. Some might call it hiding, but Radek calls it self-preservation.

* * *

**{?} – {?}**

Radek has barely closed his eyes when he finds himself being shaken awake.

"Wake up," says a voice – adult, male, with a Polish inflection and a distinctly harassed tone. He's known his share of Poles in his time, but there aren't any in Atlantis, unless the Third Expedition brought one with them, and even if they did, he doesn't know why this one would have been sent to wake him. Even if anyone knew where to look for him, there are comms for this sort of thing. "Doctor Bosak, you must wake up. The Horváth twins are dead."

His eyes snap open, not entirely of his own accord. The world around him is sharp and crisp, too real to be the creations of a tired mind but too different from where he'd gone to sleep to be anything other than a dream.

The Polish man is leaning over him, a bony hand still on his shoulder. The light in the room he finds himself in is dim, provided only by a single, flickering candle, but it is enough to make out a few of the speaker's features. His face is gaunt in the manner of someone who has lost too much weight in too short a time and his close-cropped hair does his sharp features no favours. Behind him, shadows and murmurs suggest other sleepers in the barracks.

"You must hurry. He wants the autopsies done before the morning inspection. It's already half-past three already."

 _You have the wrong person_ , he tries to say, but what comes out of his mouth is, "So soon?"

"He wishes to repeat the experiment on the Džugi girls this afternoon."

Radek is on his feet before he can think of the proper response, following the Pole out the door and down a labyrinth of grey wood hallways without another word. Try as he might, he has no control over his actions. If it is a dream, than it is the strangest dream he has ever had, and he has had some strange ones in his time.

It's only when his dream-self removes his jacket in favour of a physician's lab coat that he sees the triangles stitched onto it's breast pocket: one red, inverted, superimposed over one of yellow.

His dreams have taken him to the Auschwitz concentration camp at the height of the Second World War.

* * *

 

* * *

He falls into the dream like no time has passed, closing his eyes to find himself standing in front of a great wooden desk, the kind he's ever only seen in Victorian-era movies, flanked by blood red banners bearing the unmistakable right-facing swastika of the Nazi Party. A lone figure stands behind it, gripping the edge of the desk until his hands have turned as white as the bones beneath them. His uniform (the unmistakable grey-green of the SS, or  _Schutzstaffel_ ) is sharply pressed; a child daring enough could cut his fingers on the front pleats. The various buttons and inginia are highly polished. Evan would bet good money that his boots, despite the weather, are the same. And yet-

-and yet his collar is open, revealing the sweat-drenched shirt underneath. His hair is tousled from more than the peaked cap teetering on the near corner o the desk. His eyes are red, bloodshot, and the skin beneath bruised to the point of violence, but there's a manic light in them that makes Evan think there is more than plain and simple exhaustion at work.

His dream-self must notice, but, unlike Evan, he is more disgusted than concerned about his superior's appearance. "You wished to see me, Commandant?" he asks stiffly, his voice not his own.

The Commandant – Icarus, for there can be no mistaking his adoptive father, even in the Nazi regalia this dream has outfitted them both in – nods stiffly, his fingers impossibly tightening on the desk. "I did. We need to talk, Eduard."

"What is so important that you dragged me out of bed at this hour, in the middle of this storm, to hear it?"

"It's this war, Eduard."

"The war, sir?"

"I can't stand it," he vows, shuttering. Though he doesn't look strong enough, he pushes away from the desk violently, so much so that a more modern piece of furniture would have gone skidding across the floor.

Evan's dream-self, to his credit, barely flinches at this outburst.

Icarus continues, clearly unaware that his actions are outside the range of human normal. "Don't get me wrong, I understand  _hate_. I understand  _need_  and  _must_  and  _balance_. I understand that eighty million people have to die so that the  _porta_  would be taken out of Egypt and resources expended to discover its operation, so that one day fifteen billion people across two dozen galaxies can be saved. I hate it, but I understand it. It was the choice I made: this war and hundreds like it for a future free of them."

"Sir?"

"I don't expect you to understand. You believe in this war, Eduard. You think it's  _good_  and  _noble_  and _right_. But you can't build paradise – or the closest thing a universe can ever get to it – from exclusion. It doesn't work that way. Ten or twenty generations ago, the people you're killing now were your brothers. The blood your spilling now may as well be your own, for all the difference it makes."

Though Evan himself can make some sense of Icarus' words, he can feel his dream-self stiffen with every syllable. His disgust culminates in the question, "Have you gone mad?" said with such Teutonic fury that Evan, though he can feel his mouth move, can hardly imagine it as coming from himself.

"Oh, yes," Icarus answers, unusually honest. "But that's not important right now."

"I disagree. Since it is obvious that you are not longer fit for duty, I must-"

"The only thing you  _must_  do is stop your experiments."

A strangled, "Sir?" is his only reply.

"You're the chief doctor here, Doctor Wirths. If you order your men to stop their experiments, the other camps will follow. You're the kind of man others want to follow. In another life, you could have been a great man. I robbed you of that by choosing this universe and this war, but I'm giving you the chance now to be the person you always should have been. You're a good man, Eduard, a kind man. Stop these experiments. Save the universe that little bit of suffering."

"You  _are_  mad," his dream self – Eduard Wirths – says.

"That's hardly the point," Icarus waves off the accusation, rounding his desk to stand uncomfortably close. "I'm not asking you to change the world. No one could have stopped this war – one way or another, it was always going to happen. But you can stop your experiments. Maybe these people have to die. Maybe some of them even deserve it. But your experiments are just wrong. I don't know if suffering is inevitable or if it builds character or preserves free will or whatever else the philosophers and apologists argue, but I  _do_  know that what you're doing goes beyond the pall, Eduard. War or not, prisoners or not, Jew or gentile or anything in between, no one deserves what you and your lot are doing. It's pointless and malicious and cruel and you're above that Eduard, you really are."

Evan can feel his dream-self shaking with anger. "I must call the  _Feldgendarmerie_."

"No, no, no," Icarus says, walking the line between sadness and insanity. "That won't do at all."

He snaps his fingers and a flood of dizziness overcomes Evan, strong enough that it's a minor miracle he manages to stay on his feet. His vision goes completely black and, when it finally clears, Icarus is back behind his desk, collar buttoned, hair straightened, hardly looking as he had moments before.

Then Evan blinks, the Commandant isn't Icarus at all, but some rough, square jawed man with close-cropped hair and a permanent scowl. And it is he who orders, "Dismissed,  _Standortarzt_ ," as if their conversation never happened.

* * *

They play the game for another week of dreamtime, Icarus calling Evan's dream-self to the Commandant's office for a midnight talk in the Commandant's body, each more desperate than the last. By the fifth, he's fairly certain Icarus  _is_  actually mad, if not in the way his dream-self thinks. Twenty-seven billion years is a long time to be alone and the universe has never been a kind place to those who care too much, as Icarus does beneath his laconic façade.

Maybe that all the Devil is: the One who cares, the One who cares so much it hurts, and that hurt destroys Himself and everyone He touches, because excess of love destroys just as easily as excess of hate, and more insidiously.

Either way, Icarus continues to try to persuade Evan's dream-self to put an end to the dreadful medical experiments he and the other doctors preform on their prisoners, but after a week even Icarus can see it's pointless. His dream-self, Eduard Wirths, wholeheartedly believes in what he's doing, and not even divine providence can chance that.

And that's when the trouble starts.


	9. Vir, Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart. Or, John's Dream.

**20 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

Iohannes can feel himself slip, slip, slipping away. He is mortal now, the atoms of his hands borne out of the heart of the star that birthed this world, twisted into strands of muscle and lines of bone and litres of blood. For the first time in twice the history of the universe, his flesh is more than light and memory. The head on his shoulders is made of carbon and calcium, the mind inside of hydrogen and oxygen and other things besides. He is finite and limited. One day he will die.

One day he shall die and his ashes shall drift out into the universe, until all that he is mixes with all that ever was, forming new stars and new planets, but for now he is finite, confined to flesh and blood and the limitations of each.

Try as he might, the knowledge he possessed as a twenty-seven billion year old Ascended being is too much for even an Alteran brain to handle. Like water in cupped hands, it proves impossible to contain, and Iohannes can almost physically feel the memories fall away.

And so he dreams.

He dreams of Auschwitz, the Fall of Tarquinus, and the Immolation of Gaheris. He dreams of the Twelfth Furling Civil War, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and Elizabeta’s pointless, senseless, untimely death. He dreams of the Sack of Vigornia, the Scourge of Hanka, and the slaughter of the Abydonians during the battle of above their homeworld. He dreams of the bombing of Loegria, the destruction of Anbiya, and the downfall of Icarus Eosphorus.

And in the worst moments – the absolute worst moments, when he knows it’s impossible to forgive himself for all that he’s done, when the knowledge no one ever truly walks away from _Haeresis_ weighs heavily on his mind; when he can’t help but think the universe would be better off if he was no longer around to make bad situations that much worse, – he dreams of what he did to Rodney. The other memories will fade in time, but that one will haunt him forever.

But it’s more than that. Iohannes can feel _himself_ falling away with each new dream. Even the shadows of a billion years of horrors, however diminished, are too much for an Alteran mind to hold. Soon, the only thing he will be able to remember is _hate_ and _torment_ and _enmity_. He suspects his friends will be forced to end his life for their own safety long before he works up the courage to take it himself.

He doesn’t want to die, but he’s spent twenty-seven billion years seeped in pain and death and suffering. If he ever had the ability to do something good with his life, it’s long gone now. He cannot close his eyes except to see blood and ash and bone. In the pulse of his blood he can hear the drumbeats and the screaming and-

* * *

{?} **– {?}**

 

-the shriek of Replicator cruisers as they decelerate rapidly in the atmosphere. They are such tiny things, barely thirty-five meters long – the Terrans have thalassic battleships ten times the size, and even their 304s are double that length, – but they howl as they pierce the sky, coming to a rapid standstill from gees that would have flattened an organic being.

There are so many of them, they darken the sky, making twilight out of midday. Any moment now, blocks that make up the cruisers will separate, reforming into the spiders that will strip this world bare.

Iohannes looks away quickly. He has seen this devastation play out on a hundred thousand worlds already. He does not need to see it again.

The man beside him follows his gaze to the distant mountains. Iohannes hasn’t bothered to cloak himself in a mortal form this time – wearing another’s body to communicate takes energy, and he is trying to conserve all that he can to Descend, the future he once left now not even two years away – but it doesn’t surprise him that the Nox can see him. Their species has always had heightened perception.

“You can stop this,” he tells him.

“I cannot,” the man calmly disagrees, seemingly as unbothered by the imminent demise of his race as the incorporeity of his conversation partner.

“Maybe not by yourself, but there are enough of you here to make a difference. Send a signal to the Asgard or the Terrans. You know they’ll send help, Anteaus. You just have to hold out long enough for it to get here.”

Anteaus shakes his head, his hair flying in wild counterpoint to his solemn tone, "Our ways have served us for as long as our people have lived."

“Yes, well, your people are about to _stop_ living if you don’t do something, so forgive me for trying to do something about it.”

“You are very young-“

Iohannes snorts. If he’s _very young_ , the universe is barley out of the womb.

“You are very young,” Anteaus repeats, calm as the Replicator beetles and spiders begin to drop from the sky. The ground shakes when the heaviest fall. Great flocks of birds take flight across the forest as their treetop homes topple beneath them. Smoke can be seen in the distance. “Maybe one day you will learn that your way is not the only way.”

“I’m not saying you need to _change_ anything. Go on living in the forest, see if I care. All I want you to do is try to _survive_. You can at least do that.”

“We are who we are, young Icarus. That can never change.”

“So what? You’re just going to bow down and accept your extinction? What good does that do anyone?”

“What good would fighting do?” he counters. “We will die either way. Why not go with peace and dignity?”

“Screw peace and dignity! Fight back. Don’t just lie down and let them kill you. Fight for your life. Fight for your mother’s life. Fight for your children’s. Fight for your homes and your friends and your forests. Fight to buy time for the Asgard and the Terrans, who are searching for a way to destroy these god-forsaken creatures once and for all!”

Anteaus laughs, as if Iohannes’ rage somehow amuses him. “Icarus, I am an old and, despite your years, I have lived far longer than you. So listen to me when I say there are few things in life we can control. We cannot choose the manner of our births anymore than those whom we fall in love with, but, if we are lucky, we can choose how we die. The Nox choose to die as we lived: in peace.”

“If you’re not going to fight for your lives, you don’t deserve them. You’re all just cowards and fools, preaching high ideals but without the courage or conviction to _do_ anything with them.”

“On the contrary: it takes a great deal of courage to let oneself be killed, far greater courage than it takes to kill.”

“Don’t do this!” Iohannes shouts, hearing the Replicators coming. “Fight back!” he screams. “Fight-!”

* * *

**20 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

“-back! Come on, you coward, fight back!”

“John?”

He blinks. The forests of Gaia disappear. Atlantis rises around him, her towers unmistakable even in the predawn light. The memory already begins to fade. He will never have to experience the extinction of the Nox again with such strength and ferocity. All he has to do is let himself forget the smell of the smoke and the scream of deceleration and the sound that flesh makes when torn apart by metal, and it will all be over. Then he can move on to the next horror.

Iohannes turns around and leans back against the balcony railing, trying to take some of the pressure off his broken tibiae and succeeding only in shifting it to his battered and bruised ribs. Once he would have been able to heal his injuries in half a heartbeat, but now it is all he can do to stand up straight without passing out from the pain. “ _Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?”_

“I’m sorry, what was that?” someone asks, joining him on the balcony, while ‘Lantis answers-

// _Even the Devil was once an angel_.//

He snorts. “One day you’re going to stop believing the best of me. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but you will.” Maybe it will be the day he finally steps off this balcony instead of allowing this charade of life to go on.

//Never,// ‘Lantis promises.

It’s only once Iohannes has finished making a rude gesture at the ceiling that he really notices he’s no longer alone on the balcony. “Hey Carson,” he says with forced cheer. “Sorry about that. I’m afraid ‘Lantis and I are having a bit of a difference of opinion at the moment.”

The doctor waves the comment off. “I’m more concerned about whether or not you’ve been eating.”

“I’ve… eaten.”

“It doesn’t look like it, lad.”

“I’m fine,” he lies. He’ll never be fine, but nobody needs to know that. Let them not know what’s becoming of him until they have to put the bullet between his eyes. That would make things easiest for everyone.

“Doesn’t look like that either. Come back with me to the IHC. You’ve been in the wind for four days. I need to make sure you’ve not torn any of your stiches or reinjured your ribs.”

Iohannes doesn’t have the energy to fight him. He doesn’t have the energy to anything except just accept the memories as they come, washing over him like an endless wave of pain and suffering and hate that he can feel changing what little of himself still remains.

He lets Carson drag him off to the infirmary, tutting over his injuries like the mother hen Rodney has always claimed he is. “You shouldn’t be walking, let alone running about the way you do. The pins in your legs are to help you heal, not to give you an excuse to go hurting yourself again.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says flatly.

“No you won’t, not if you keep going about it like this. You might as well have been held together with duct tape and paperclips they way you came back – it was like you’d forgotten all those physiology classes I gave you when you first Ascended. It’s a miracle I was able to put you back together at all.”

“I know. Rodney told me.”

Carson sighs, pausing in his poking and prodding to say, “And yet, you’ve rebroken one of your ribs. I’m going to have to set it before it splinters and hits something important. Now,” he holds up a syringe this here is an anaesthetic that will let me set your ribs without you moving about.“

“That’s really not necessary-“ Iohannes begins, but the needle’s already in his arm and a cool wave of something that is decidedly _not_ anaesthesia is washing through his veins, pull, pull, pulling him down into darkness, where the dreams wait for him.

* * *

* * *

“Well,” Evan says tiredly, moving away from the windows that overlook the isolation room, where Icarus is strapped to a bed below, “I can definitely say this isn’t how I’d anticipated spending my day.”

Rodney doesn’t even turn away from the glass. He just says, “Evan, please, do us all a favour and shut up for a moment.”

He doesn’t even waste a glare – Rodney’s had his eyes glued to Icarus in the room below since the moment they entered the observation room – and stalks across the narrow space. There’s a couch there, but Ronon’s already sprawled across it, so Evan settles for perching atop one of the empty packing crates that line the remainder of the wall. “This doesn’t just involve you, you know.”

“Of course I know,” Rodney snaps. “Our lives have never been our own for the entire time he and I have been together. Just give me a minute to deal with the fact that my husband’s strapped to a gurney on suicide watch. _Then_ the _rector_ of Atlantis will help the new _imperator_ of Pegasus figure out what do about the fact that his predecessor has gone completely around the bend.”

There are people on the stairs. “In Lord Icarus’ defence,” says one, “I don’t believe that he’s truly insane.”

Evan jumps to his feet, less for the speaker than the woman behind her, twenty years of ingrained habit showing through despite almost a year since his illegal dishonourable discharge. He covers it up as best as he can by way of greeting, “Doctor Heightmeyer,” as graciously as possible.

Heightmeyer, bless her, knows when to play along. “Lord ‘Helianus,” she counters with far greater poise, the corners of her lips turning upwards.

Ronon snorts at their ridiculousness.

Rodney ignores them all.

“I hope you don’t mind my delay,” she continues. “I thought it would be best if Doctor Beckett was involved in this discussion, as well as Colonel Carter.”

That manages to grab Rodney’s attention. “What?” he asks, spinning around. “No.”

Evan sighs. “Pops-“

“No. I will not have this turned into another round of Lantean-Terran one-upmanship. This is John’s _life_ we’re talking about, not trading rights or staff appointments.”

“I promise,” Colonel Carter says, holding up both her hands in a universal _I come in peace_ gesture. It’s a little strange seeing her in the command red of the Third Expedition, rather than the green or black uniforms the SGC prefers, “I’m only here to help John.”

“I’m sorry, did you get a medical degree while you were away?”

“Pops, Colonel Carter is the new Head of the Expedition, remember. We may need her help to help Icarus.”

Rodney snorts, turning back towards the glass and the isolation room below. “The only thing that can help John is taking Janus’ time machine and going back long enough to keep Ganos from Ascending him in the first place.”

“I have an idea about that, actually.”

All of them save Rodney turn towards Doctor Heightmeyer. By this time, she’s cleared out a space for herself on Ronon’s couch, the dark cobalt skirts of her houppelande arrayed around her. Not for the first time, Evan thinks the city psychologist is the sort of woman who needs to be painted, and by a better artist than such as he. 

“I do not believe that Icarus is truly insane,” she says. “He’s fully able to distinguish fantasy from reality. The problem, however, seems to be one of an _excess_ of reality.”

Ronon, still sprawled across the remainder of the couch, looks intrigued. “What d’you mean?”

“I have spent much of the morning speaking with Lord Icarus. From what I am given to understand, during the period we thought him dead he entered the Higher Planes and eventually destroyed them. The resulting cataclysm rewound time, if you will, and created the universe in which we now live _poste facto_.”

“And you believe him?”

“I have no reason not to,” Heightmeyer answers honestly. “We know very little about Ascension and even less about those who voluntarily choose to Descend. Furthermore, he shows none of the usual affectations of psychosis.”

“And yet,” Rodney says with a level of brusqueness prodigious even for him, “you have him strapped to a bed and are pumping him full of SSRIs.”

“There are many different kinds of mental illness, Doctor McKay. Icarus may not be psychotic, but he’s definitely experienced a significant amount of trauma in the time he was gone – specifically, twenty-seven point five billion years worth of it.”

“So what?” Evan asks, “Are you saying he has some sort of posttraumatic stress disorder?”

“It’s far more complex than that.”

“How so?” Carter asks.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rodney counters, turning away from the glass only to lean back against it, allowing himself to slide down to the floor in an ungraceful tangle of limbs and fabric. “John’s not the type to sit back and watch others suffer if he can help it. So he went around to the places where the suffering was the worst and tried to stop it. And failed. Over and over and over again, for however long there have been sentient beings in the universe. Or who knows, maybe he tried to get the amoeba to get along too.”

Heightmeyer is clearly surprised by this observation, as it takes her a moment to answer. “Yes. How did you know?”

Rodney snorts, but it’s half-hearted at best. “I married the idiot, didn’t I?”

“It’s as Doctor McKay says,” Heightmeyer continues, re-gathering steam, “For the last billion years or so, he’s gone around trying to stop the biggest tragedies he could find – from the nuclear bombing that destroyed the original Loegria until the present day.”

Realization comes all at once and has Evan halfway down the stairs before he can put words to his thoughts. Waving aside the nurse at the isolation room door, he hurries to Icarus’ beside and is lucky enough to find him awake despite the heavy level of medication the doctors have him on.

“ _Ei finem facere curabas, Argathelianus?_ ” he asks, oddly calm despite the padded straps holding him to the bed and the IV line running half a hundred prescriptions into his veins.

“No. I need to you answer a couple questions: What was the name of the man who set off the first nuclear bombs the day Loegria was destroyed?”

Icarus head falls back against the gurney. His eyes roll back into his skull just in time for the folks with medical degrees to arrive, but before they can add still more medications to his saline drip, he answers in surprisingly steady voice, “Aristaeus. His name was Aristaeus of Vigornia, a _tirbunus_ in the army of the Cambrian Empire. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I tried to stop the bombs, but I couldn’t. Two billion people died instantly. The rest followed within a matter of weeks.”

Evan closes his eyes. It is exactly like in his dream. But he must be certain. “And the doctor you spoke with at Auschwitz?”

“Eduard Wirths,” he answers after a shorter delay. “He was the SS- _Standortarzt_ of the camp. He wouldn’t stop his experiments. That’s all I asked, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“I know,” he says with what he hopes is reassurance.

“What was that about, Major?” Colonel Carter asks.

He’s too tired to remind her that he’s not a _major_ anymore, that her Air Force stole that from him while he was busy doing the right thing. Instead he simply says, “I think we may have a bigger problem than just Icarus: I’ve been dreaming of the things he’s seen. God knows how many others have too.” 


	10. Vir, Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last installment of the "Vir" arc. 
> 
> 1) Believe it or not, after almost 2 months struggling with this story, I'm finally finished with "Vir" - and ended up writing this chapter all in one day. 2) The quotes are from Alistair Reynold's excellent Revelation Space. If you ever wanted to read the type of SyFy book Rodney might write, that is is. 3) NGC 5236 and NGC 4945 are distant galaxies. 4) odala is the name of the rune they use for the Asgard in "The Torment of Tantalus." I think, if I'm reading it right.

**21 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

" _Sylveste had to let his mind rest for a moment_ ," he reads, shifting the book to alleviate the cramping in his hand. He should really put the text down – his voice is growing hoarse and his eyes are straining – but there are hardly twenty pages left and he's invested in the ending by this point.

" _The immensity of it was dwindling now, leaving only the ringing aftertones, like the last echoes of the final chord of the greatest symphony ever played. In a few moments, he doubted he would remember much at all. There was simply insufficient room in his head for it all,_ " Evan continues, noticing the light in Icarus' observation room beginning to change.

Is it sunrise already? Had he been here all night? It appears so. He'd only meant to grab a few things from his office before retiring for the night, regardless of what dreams may come. Then he'd found this book amid all the papers Icarus had left behind – a real book, made of paper and ink, rather than the digital files that were far more common in Atlantis – and thought that it might hold some special significance to his adoptive father. Evan had held the vain hope that reading aloud from it might help Icarus find his way out of the depths of his mind, where he'd retreated following the revelation that his memories are infecting the humans around him, and back into the land of the living.

With twenty pages to go, Evan's hope seems to have been extremely misplaced, but ever the optimist, he continues to read. " _And, strangely, he did not feel the slightest sorrow at its passing. For those few moments, it had been wonderful to taste that transhuman knowledge, but it was simply too much for one man to know. It was better to live; better to carry a memory of a memory, than to suffer the vast burden of knowing._ "

Somebody snorts. It takes Evan a moment to connect it with  _Icarus_ , who somehow manages to seem utterly at ease and  _completely awake_  despite still being strapped to his hospital bed on nominal suicide watch.

"How long have you been awake?" he asks.

"Since about chapter two?" Icarus manages to shrug despite the band across his shoulder and the second restraining his upper torso. "I can see why Rory likes it when you read to her. You really get into it."

Evan snaps the book shut, feeling rather foolish. "You could have said something."

"It was distracting – something to focus on other than all of the various ways sentient beings have discovered to inflict suffering on each other." Icarus goes silent, still, eyes focused into the ill-lit distance on something that only he can see. His jaw clenches, his hands curl into fists, but otherwise he gives no sign of the horrors he must be experiencing; the drugs Heightmeyer prescribed have done that at least.

It takes Icarus several moments to come back to himself after the memory passes – or, maybe, it simply takes him that time to reach the decision to pretend that this memory, like all those that must have come and gone over the last five hundred pages, never happened. He just waves his hand as best as the padded cuffs will allow and says, "Don't mind me. Go on."

Evan, for lack of a better option, resettles and goes to do just that.

"Actually," he interrupts before Evan's even turned to the right page, "do you mind getting me something to write with first? And maybe un-cuffing my hands – or just one, maybe?" He wiggles the fingers on one of his hands experimentally, as if to test circulation. "It's just, I'd like to write some of this down."

Evan thinks the suicide watch is pointless – if Icarus wanted to kill himself, he would have done so before now – and the cuffs even more so, so he releases both of Icarus' hands before looking around the room for something he could write with. He finds a stack of printer paper inexplicably in one of the cabinets, steals the pen from the clipboard at the foot of the bed, and presents them both to the Ancient, who looks mildly amused at the primitive level of technology but accepts them both readily.

Once the bed is tilted forward enough that Icarus can write despite the straps across his shoulders, chest, and thighs, Evan reopens the book and begins to read: " _It was better to live; better to carry a memory of a memory, than to suffer the vast burden of knowing. He was not meant to think like a god…_ "

* * *

" _She spread arms wide, as if she had wings; as if she could fly. The red ground – fluctuating, shimmering as ever – dropped smoothly away_ ," he finishes, automatically glancing at the ceiling to see what his audience might have thought of it.

Atlantis' feelings on science fiction, however, tend much more towards abstracted tolerance than Rory's exuberant voracity, as illustrated by her rather perfunctory, /That was lovely _,_ Argathelianus. Thank you./

Evan doesn't mind. He understands that, however much the city likes him, it had been  _Aurora_  who had chosen him. He would always belong a little bit more to the  _linter_  than he would to Atlantis, for all it was she who had finished his conversion process, such as it was. 'Lantis is John's in a way she has never been anyone else's. 'Lantis will always be John's. And if she doesn't happen to share John's fascination with Terran science fiction, well, that's just one more mystery in a galaxy full of them.

He goes to ask Icarus if the book was sufficiently distracting, but sees that his hospital bed is already covered with papers so he asks instead, "What are you writing?"

"Things you'll need to know. Things I need to remember. The future," Icarus answers obliquely, peeling a newly finished page off the top of the stack of printer paper and thrusting it at Evan.

He squints at the sheet. It is covered top to bottom, front and back, in soldier-straight columns of Ancient letters. Some phrases are much bigger than others – towards the centre of what he assumes is the front is the Ancient word for  _Destiny_  written in letters an inch tall, although most of the rest of the page reads as complete gibberish at first glance. "You couldn't have written it in English?"

Icarus doesn't answer, so he picks up a few more. A great number of them seem to be equations Evan couldn't begin to make sense of even if they hadn't been written in base eight, with obscure titles like _the course of chance and destiny_ and  _planning alone is insufficient._ No few are written entirely in blocks of texts like the first, all with even more impossibly bizarre titles, of which the prize goes to one that has the words  _trace the river backwards to the source of the stream and there is always one who is two who is none_  curling outwards from the centre in a perfect Golden Spiral.

There is one written in English, however, that he finds after it falls to the floor. On it are six words: FREEDOM, CHANCE, DISCOVERY, DESTINY, INTEGRITY, and AUDACITY. The last two are crossed out, the first with the words  _supernova, NGC 5236_ written beneath, the second with the words  _black hole, NGC 4945_  above it in drifting letters. Arrows point out from the rest – the arrow from FREEDOM towards the stylized eye symbol that is one of the only things they know about the Furlings, DISCOVERY to the  _odala_  rune of the Asgard, CHANCE to a giant question mark, and DESTINY to a series of nine glyphs that Lorne does not recognize but immediately knows can only be one thing, though how exactly he knows this he cannot later say.

With a glance back at Icarus, who is writing too furiously to pay him any heed, he opens a comm line. "Doctor McKay? Colonel Carter? What do you guys know about nine chevron Gate addresses?"

* * *

"This isn't a Gate address," Rodney scoffs, taking one look at the paper before passing it off to Colonel Carter in favour of examining the other documents that litter Icarus' bed. "It's sort of numerical code or cypher."

"Why do you say that?" Carter asks with genuine curiosity.

"Well, for one thing it doesn't  _look_  like any symbol in any Stargate system that we know of."

"Exactly – that we  _know_  of."

"For another," Rodney says, running roughshod over her protestation, "even if it  _did_  belong to a network of Stargates that we don't know anything about, every symbol we  _have_  come across has some basis in the constellation of the world on which it was originally developed. The ones in the Milky Way use the constellations as seen on Earth sixty-five million years ago-"

"Sixty-four point four, actually," Icarus corrects, shoving a sheaf of papers at his husband, upsetting the stack already in his hand.

Unlike before, Rodney takes this interruption magnanimously, continuing with the correction, "Based on the constellations on Earth sixty-four point four billion years ago. The symbols for Pegasus are what Lantea's constellations looked like ten thousand…." He glances towards Icarus.

"Ten thousand, three hundred forty-five years."

"Thank you. They are what Lantea's constellations were ten thousand, three hundred forty-five years ago. But these," Rodney gestures with the roll of papers Icarus had handed him, "are nothing but dots, dashes, and squiggly lines. That screams  _code_  to me, not  _constellation_."

"Maybe it's both."

"Both? Why would it be both?"

"Why not? We know the Ancients were on the run from the Ori for a long time." She pauses deliberately, glancing towards Icarus. When he fails to offer the exact timeframe, Carter continues, "Maybe it was an extra way of keeping their Gate addresses safe. There's nothing anywhere that says Gate symbols  _have_  to be based on constellations."

"But why nine symbols then?"

"Well, we never have figured out what the ninth chevron does."

"Who says it has to do anything?" Evan asks, a little tired of being forgotten in this conversation. "As much as we like to pretend otherwise, not everything the Ancients did had a purpose, particularly the farther back in history you go. There have to be at least a dozen better, more efficient ways to build a flying city and yet they chose to go with spires and stained glass windows. That's aesthetics, not functionality." He glances quickly at the ceiling. "Sorry, 'Lantis."

Atlantis flickers the lights in a way he takes to mean  _no offense taken_.

Colonel Carter looks at them both amusedly. "Why don't you just ask the city what it means then?"

Evan, seeing no reason why not, "What do you say, 'Lantis? Know anything about these symbols?"

/They are indeed symbols for the  _astrae portae_ ,/ she offers, /but we do not know what their destination is. Only the  _sator_  that they came from would know that./

Rodney glances at the ceiling as if betrayed. "What the hell is a  _sator_?"

"Seed ships," Icarus answers, surprising them all, "sent out during the Second Wave to seed humanoid life throughout the galaxies. If the  _Haeretici_  ever tried to find us, we hoped to disguise our trail by placing Descendants on every planet capable of supporting life within a hundred galaxies. There were six originally. Only two remain." He drops his pen, rolls up the last few pages he's written, and passes them to Rodney. "You'll need these."

Rodney adds them to his earlier pile. "What  _are_  all these?"

"Things you'll need," Icarus shrugs. "Equations. Histories. Formulas. A formal declaration of abdication. My will. A Do Not Resuscitate order."

Evan had been watching Rodney shuffle through the papers in his hand – all appeared to be in Ancient, of course, but then again Rodney was rather more practiced at reading Ancient than Evan was – but now his eyes snap towards Icarus-

Icarus, who's still strapped to his hospital bed everywhere save his hands, and even they are limited in motion by the leather bands across his shoulder and chest. The ballpoint pen Evan had given him now lies somewhere around his knees, capped and far out of reach. There are a few sheets of paper still on his lap, but most have migrated into Rodney's arms or onto the floor. His right arm is raised, trying to scratch at a spot underneath the left side of the strap across his chest, and there is absolutely nothing he could use to harm himself within reach.

Until his right hand starts to glow. A terrible wail rises from his heart rate monitor.

Suddenly, doctors are streaming through the door. Someone is saying, "He's in V-fib," and another answering, "Asystole," and other words are being passed that he neither catches nor understands.

"What happened?" Doctor Beckett asks between a request for paddles and the order for them to be charged to two hundred. "I thought you were watching him!"

"We were!" Rodney insists, moving to the side just enough to be out of the doctors' way but still close enough to be a bother. He manages to look more resigned than worried, as if he'd expected Icarus to try something to try something like this sooner or later. "He must have stopped his heart, like he did with Captain Cadman."

It's impossible to tell if Beckett's gone completely still or if his muscles have somehow seized up along with Icarus' as they try to shock his heart into beating. " _What_?

"No change," says one of the nurses.

"Charge to two twenty," he orders, one eye still on Rodney. "What do you mean  _like he did with Laura_?"

"She begged him to help her die after Michael fed on her. I'll explain later,  _just save him now_."

Beckett, to his credit, attempts to do just that, looking shaken.

"What about the DNR?" Evan hears himself asking, stupidly. He hadn't thought Icarus – his adoptive father, the man he would have followed into the heart of a star once upon a time and for whom he'd broken every covenant he'd ever made – would honestly try to kill himself. Perhaps he was overly fond of flirting with death, yes, and had yet to meet a suicide mission he didn't like, but that didn't mean Icarus actually  _wanted_  to die – or so he'd have thought. But if he truly wants to die, that's his choice to make. They should respect that rather than force him to live with the impossible burden of knowledge his time as an Ascended being has left him with.

"Need I remind you,  _Argathelianus_ ," Rodney says sharply, "that your dear old dad was  _on suicide watch_ when he signed it? It doesn't count. I'm his husband; I say shock away."

The doctors do once, twice more, until normal sinus rhythm has been restored. Only then does Rodney allow the nurses – as well as himself and Colonel Carter – to be shepherded out of the room, to answer questions and be offered surprisingly decent cups of coffee while they wait for answers

Six hours later when Icarus finally wakes up, they are the first ones through the door.

* * *

* * *

The first thing Iohannes notices is the pain. Every inch of him aches, from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair, and he doesn't think he'll ever  _not hurt_  again.

The second thing he notices is the noise. Atlantis has never been quiet, not even when she'd been empty, but this is more than just the quiet, sleepy song of a slumbering city; it is voices. People, speaking in a language he doesn't know and can't understand.

"What the hell was  _that_  about?" one of them demands, all but quivering with barely contained energy, his hands moving in a way that, even in silence, seem to ask  _who_  and  _what_  and  _why why why_. "Do you even  _know_  what you put me through every time you do something like this, John? Do you? At this rate _I_ 'll be the one whose heart finally gives out from the stress of it all. I did  _not_  marry you to be sent into an early grave."

Iohannes closes his eyes, allowing the words to wash over him until the tide of speech ends.

The man who'd spoken continues to watch him worriedly, his hands wringing inside the sleeves of his vaguely Tirianan  _pulviale_. Another man, with Father's colouring in military dress, stands at the foot of the bed, weary but concerned. Between them is a longhaired blonde woman in clothing the likes of which he has never seen, with slashes of dark carmine on her deep grey uniform. She too is concerned, but there's a hardness to the set of her jaw.

" _Qui estis?_ " he asks with deliberate slowness. " _Quam Atlante adestis_?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Ancient at the end is: "Who are you?" and "How did you come to be on Atlantis?"


	11. Miles, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I know this is ridiculously short, but I'm having a crisis of writing faith right now and if I didn't post, I might well have deleted everything I've ever written and gone off and unwisely confronted the interns that have taken over my building about their slamming of doors after 11pm and use of firecrackers in close proximity to, well, anything. 2) I might still have deleted it all if not for popkin16 , who held my hand throughout most of this. 3) Miles is soldier. The fact that it looks like mile comes from how the Romans used to tell distance - a mile is 1000 paces, or was once. 4) It's a lot of talking, I know. 5) Ha-Satan in Hebrew means The Accuser or The Adversary. 5) Please do tell me if it sucks. I think it sucks. God help me.

**21 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

It's the scars that convince him.

It's the scars that convince him because other lies can be perfected, other questions explained away, but scars are forever and his skin is a map of them.

Most of them are faint, imperceptible to the point of imagination, lines healed away by people more skilled at healing than he: There is where Diana de Aynecuria Immunes had reset half the bones in his right side after the incident with the  _autobirota_ , pushing those that had pierced his skin back into her place with bare hands until the best healers could arrive. Those small ridges, all but invisible beneath his hair, are where Father drilled into his occipital bone to insert the nanoids that allow him to talk with Atlantis. They tell him that this is real, that this is something beyond the delusions of an anxious and lonely mind.

But it's the scars he doesn't remember that hold Iohannes' attention. The most obvious is the angry, livid cicatrix running from the dip of his collarbone well past the bottom of his sternum, the purpose for which he can only assume to be to give some primitive doctor access to his chest cavity, but there are others as well. A set of three matched scars, red and tender, has caved out places on both his legs near the ankle – two on the outside, one slightly higher on his inner left. Older than these but still unknown to him is the small scar, made as if by a miniature Wraith feeding slit by lacking the corresponding finger pad marks, on his neck.

And the wounds he expects? The jagged, raw lines of new-formed skin where glass from the auxiliary control room had been plucked out of his skin  _are_  there, just not  _raw_  or  _new_. They're faint, hidden beneath a tan he did not have when the city was submerged, and old – old enough for him to believe that three years have passed.

/It has been more than three years,/ 'Lantis corrects gently, brushing against his mind like silk and secrets and sunshine on clear spring days. She is afraid for him. She is afraid for him and Iohannes doesn't know why.

* * *

"I can't believe Colonel Sheppard would actually try to kill himself," Keller says, moving to stand at his side, clearly trying to be comforting but going about it in all the wrong ways. Rodney wishes she wouldn't. Jennifer Keller is a beautiful woman, exactly his type in every way possible, and an exceptional doctor, but sometimes he finds it hard to be comfortable around her. It's not an issue of attraction (Rodney's married, not blind, but he's never felt compelled to act upon it), it's that she tries too hard. She tries to be less attractive than she is, less intelligent, less of anything that might cause her to be singled out in a crowd, as if she's afraid of being noticed, let alone noteworthy.

John has always done the same thing, but whereas he plays a game of smoke and mirrors, letting people see only what they want to see, Jennifer tries to fit herself into the box she's created in the image of so many less remarkable people. The real John is still there for people find if they look hard enough. But the real Jennifer is slowly disappearing, lost as she cuts everything which doesn't fit away, and it makes trying to carry on a conversation with the Third Expedition's Chief of Medicine an uncomfortable task even at the best of times.

At least, Rodney finds it uncomfortable, even if no one else does. It's like watching someone slowly kill herself, one bloody inch at a time, and he's already seen more than enough of that today.

Radek makes a noise of disagreement, tapping his fingers against the back of one of the waiting room's couches. "I do not think the Colonel was trying to kill himself."

"He tried to stop his own heart," Evan points out from the couch opposite, rather more sharply than is his wont – Rodney has not been keeping up with  _that_  soap opera and doesn't know if they've broken up or are on the verge of it or  _what_  anymore. "People who want to live generally don't do that."

"What you forget is that Colonel Sheppard is very much smarter than he wants us to believe – and I am not speaking of book smarts, though that is true also. He was in an observation room in middle of IHC in a room filled with people. He had to know that the moment he attempted anything an army of doctors would descend upon him, regardless of DNR, particularly with Rodney there."

"You're suggesting that he wanted us to save him," Sam considers out loud, leaning forward so that her elbows brush her thighs. "More than that, he wanted us to  _shock_  him specifically."

Keller shifts beside him. "Why would he want that?"

Why would John want that indeed? Rodney can understand the subterfuge: If John's plan had been to have increasingly high voltages sent through his body, he had to have known Rodney would do everything in his power to stop it. Yet what purpose would that serve? Amnesia seems an unexpected and undesirable outcome, but what other change had there been? Had he simply reached the point where the burden of memory become too much?

Sam reaches the same conclusion half-a-second later. "You think he's attempting a full system restore."

"It is only conclusion that makes sense. Sheppard is self-sacrificing, not suicidal. He would not have bothered with the formal abdication otherwise."

Evan nods thoughtfully. When he speaks, his tone is more reasonable, almost as if he cannot be bothered to be impolite while he has a problem to turn over in his mind, "When I asked him what he was doing before I called the rest of you, he was writing down things he needed to remember. He knew he was going to forget."

"But why would he do that?" Keller asks, finally moving from her place at Rodney's side to sit near Evan on his couch. "Forgetting three years of your life on purpose, it doesn't make any sense. I'm not saying those three years were all a bed of roses, but it does seem a little extreme."

"Because it wasn't the last three years he was trying to get rid of," Rodney snorts, speaking up for the first time since this whole wretched conversation began. "It was the last twenty-seven billion years."

"So you think Sheppard was telling the truth about creating the universe?" Sam questions, sounding condescending only by incident.

"I don't know. But  _he_  certainly believed it."

"Well, it would make sense, wouldn't it?"

"How so?"

"In the dreams I had," Evan offers, "Icarus always took an adversarial position to those in power. He was always trying to convince them  _not_  to do something they believed to be good and righteous – the will of god, so to speak. If that's any indication of the way he spent all the years from the dawn of creation to now, who's to say some of that didn't trickle down into recorded history?  _Open the box. Eat the apple. Fly towards the sun_."

"So what?" Sam asks, less confrontational than curious. "Your argument is that because there are myths about Satan, Sheppard must be telling the truth?"

"I'm saying that because Ra was a goa'uld and Thor was an Asgard, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the universe's last Ancient – who might very well have gone mad prevent all of the horrible things human beings have done to each other in the name of their gods – could be the original _Ha-Satan_."

"It has precedent," Radek admits.

"It's insane," Rodney counters, but is spared from having to point out just how  _completely absurd_  it really is by the door from the hallway opening and Carson entering. " _Finally_. Do you have any idea how late you are? I've had to sit here and listen to this lot decide that, since it's debatable that John is actually crazy, he's probably just the Devil instead. Wait," he catches himself, watching Carson sink tiredly into the first chair he comes across – the stiff, uncomfortable one near the door the rest of them had purposefully avoided – and rub at his eyes with one hand. "What's wrong? Don't tell me with have another crisis going on because I, quite frankly, am at the end of my ability to deal with anything more complicated than the Valium addiction I see myself developing after this week."

Carson sighs heavily and, somehow, Rodney knows what's coming before he says anything. Not the specifics, but the general shape of the newest disaster they must face. "Kate didn't show up for her shift. When she didn't answer her comm, Amanda went by her quarters. They found her in her bed; she'd already been dead for hours."

 


	12. Miles, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this is awful short but I feel real good about what I've decided to publish, but what was going to be the second half of this I didn't like as much, so.... you get this.

**21 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

"Now I've got a question for you," Icarus says, examining the lunch tray in front of him with some curiosity.

With the last three years of his memories missing, it's entirely possible that Icarus is unfamiliar with most of the foods. While cuisine in the Pegasus galaxy has always had a decidedly Levantine bent, Evan knows Ancients never ate what they could not grow themselves, and that the existing greenhouses weren't designed to be orangeries. As the botanists are fond of bemoaning, they can cultivate low-lying plants like chickpeas, cranberries, and rice  _in_  highly-automated  _masse_ , but anything that grows on trees, like olives or cacao, or even large shrubs, like coffee or tea, is beyond their capabilities.

(Which is not to say that botanists aren't trying. Half of them are trying to develop a new cultivar of coffee that grows more like a blackberry bramble. The rest are working with the engineers to try to convert one of the city's atria into a proper conservatory for the purpose.)

So, fully prepared to explain what  _pearl millet_  and  _pepper_  and even  _cheese_  are, Evan pushes aside his own lunch and says, "Only seems fair. We've been asking you all sorts of things all morning. Go ahead."

His mouth twitches upwards in a familiar, easy smile. That's not changed, at least. That was always true. "You said your name is  _Argathelianus_. Who adopted you?"

And that is… not the question he was expecting. "You did, actually."

"I sort of figured," Icarus shrugs. "No one else you've introduced me to has an Alteran name. So tell me about myself, Argathelianus: why did I adopt you?"

That's something Evan's still trying to figure out. He settles on, "It's complicated," as the best explanation.

Radek, sitting at the opposite end of the table, makes a noise he has to have picked up from Rodney. "He did it to mess with your head – to mess with your head and everybody else's."

"Yes, but I try not to ascribe base motivations to everything people do."

"People  _are_  base motivations. Looking back over human history, is almost impossible to believe that a species as murderous and perfidious and bloodthirsty as ours managed to make it through two world wars and the invention of the hydrogen bomb without destroying ourselves."

"Well  _that's_  a cheery thought. Thank you for that, Radek. I was trying to give Icarus a good impression of humanity."

Snorting, "He knows exactly what humanity is like. He's spent the better part of the last three years going up against our irrational instinct to fear what we do not understand."

"Yes," Icarus says dryly, "but you'll notice I don't actually  _remember_  any of it, so feel free to go on misleading me about what a benevolent and peaceful species you are."

"Ah, but the Major here introduced himself as  _Evan_ , not  _Argathelianus_. You remembered that on your own," Radek announces triumphantly, "which means your memories are not coming back or else not entirely gone. Which means that the answer we need may yet be in these papers."

Luckily, Icarus looks amused rather than exasperated, and accepts the stack of papers Radek hands him – luckily, because there is no doubt in his mind that Icarus would deliberately misconstrue, intentionally mistranslate, and outright lie anything he might translate  _if_  he thought the Émigrés or the Third Expedition were a threat to Atlantis. "Let's see then…."

The top sheet is the paper with the nine chevron Gate address.

Icarus runs his fingers along the lines of text, yesterday's frantic writing having left deep impressions on the cheap paper. " _Freedom, Chance, Discovery_ … These are the six  _satores_  sent out from Avalon to confuse the  _Haeretici_  if they ever tried to find us.  _Discovery_  reached the Asgard galaxy during the Fifth Wave and they tracked it back to Avalon to find us. The Unfurlers used  _Freedom_ to find us during the Sixth Wave. That follows with what's written here, so I guess  _Integrity_  got caught up in a supernova somewhere called NGC 5236-"

"It is galaxy," Radek interrupts. "We also call it Southern Pinwheel. Is about," here he pauses in the _notes_  he's taking on what blank sheets of printer paper remain, "sixteen million light years from here. Probably sixteen, maybe sixteen point five."

"Alright then,  _Integrity_  probably got caught up in a supernova in your Pinwheel, so that's three  _satores_ accounted for. Four, if you count  _Audacity_  flying into a black hole somewhere you call NGC 4945."

"Another galaxy – it doesn't have a name, but is known to have black hole at its centre."

"So," Evan says, "four of these  _satores_  are out of commission. What about  _Chance_  and  _Destiny_?"

"I guess  _Chance_  went off course – that's the best I can give you with what's here. But  _Destiny_ …" Icarus taps the dots and squiggles in the middle of the page. "You need nine chevrons to dial from Aethiopia to the  _satores_. Aethiopia has the only  _porta_  the  _satores_  can be dialled from. The  _porta_  there is also the only one in Avalon the  _satores_  can dial. Odds are that this is the address you'd dial aboard  _Destiny_  to get you back to Avalon – either that, or it's the ravings of a madman. Even money either way."

"Doesn't do us much good if we can't get to  _Destiny_."

"Can't tell you what I don't know, Doctor Z."

"Then how did you know you sometimes call me  _Doctor Z_?"

"Do you want me to help you or not?"

"Maybe the answer is somewhere else," Evan says diplomatically. "What about  _Aethiopia_? Any clue where that is?"

"Somewhere near Terra," Icarus says dismissively, leafing through the rest of the papers. There are sixty-five total – an impressive amount considering the timeframe they'd been written in. Only the first is in English. The rest are a roughly even split between cramped lines of Alteran script and equations of shaky Arabic numerals. "These are equations used in intergalactic navigation – between your experience with  _Daedalus, Apollo_ , and  _Odyssey_ , you should be able to figure those out on your own."

Radek kicks him under the table, offering him a brilliant, joyous smile that says  _see, see, he remembers_ Daedalus _and_  Apollo _; his memories are coming back; our John isn't gone forever_  for the three seconds it last before hardening. Its looks like these that let Evan know that Radek still loves him, that this forced coolness between them is equally uncomfortable for the both of them. He wishes Radek would just let go of this image he has of love having to be something grand and harsh and fated. Love doesn't need to be like that. Love hardly ever is like that, whatever examples Rodney and Icarus may leave for them.

Love can be quiet too. It can be safe and certain, sneaking up on people where they least expect it. For every Sheppard and McKay, there are a hundred more stories like their own, where friends become lovers without the stars aligning for them to find each other. Love doesn't need to be a repeated tale of loss and tragedy and stolen moments of happiness before the headsman's blade or asp's bite.

Every love story is dangerous, but rarely are they so dangerous as that.

"And these ones here," Icarus continues, "seem to be an algorithm for a pseudo-random number generator using a combination of discrete logarithms  _and_  quadratic reciprocity… Very inefficient, even with something like Atlantis' processing capabilities, but it fits in with the extreme paranoia of my ancestors."

Evan turns back to Icarus, somewhat startled by this offhand expression of intelligence. "I'm sorry, was that English or is your translation matrix on the fritz again?" He knows, objectively, that there is more to Icarus than meets the eye. He is layers upon layers, depths within depths; the abilities he shows are only a quarter of those he truly processes. He cares too much and shares too little and understands retribution better than redemption, but underneath it, Icarus is only a man – a gifted solider with human failings, tortured by genius that was stifled by war.

"It seemed perfectly sensible to me," Radek says.

"You two are hilarious. Why am I helping you again?"

"Because you like us?" Evan offers with a grin.

Iohannes smiles, one of those bright, self-effacing smiles that are impossible to tell apart from the real thing, "I'll take your word on that," he says. And Evan has no choice but to do just that.


	13. Miles, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically this has been sitting on my computer for over a week and as much as I wanted to make it longer before I posted, I just don't think that's going to happen. Work is crazy and school is crazy and Radek is being difficult (yes, I blame him; I always blame him). So... Enjoy what little there is.

**21 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

_This is a letter to yourself_ , the first page of text says,  _and before you go any further, apologize to everyone around you for what you've put them through. You may not be able to remember them, but I do, and if you listen very closely to everything I have to say, you_ will _remember them too._

_…_

_You apologize?_

_Yeah, I didn't think so_.

* * *

Iohannes glances up, looking without appearing to look for the two men they've locked with him in isolation. In theory, Lorne and Zelenka have been locked in here with him to keep from spreading the _dreams_  they're having to the rest of Atlantis' population, but Iohannes suspects that's just an excuse to keep eyes on him at all times. Zelenka's just a little too interested in what's written on the papers for Iohannes to be entirely comfortable and Lorne, well, war is war; soldiers are soldiers – even if he  _had_ apparently adopted this one before losing his memories.

Watchers or fellow captives, the pair has retreated to the small sitting area that is just about as far from his hospital bed as the room allows. They've taken seats across from each other, but there's something awfully forced in their formalities, as if it's something new and having to be relearned. Former lovers, he assumes. They'll be wrapped up in their own drama too much to pay any attention to his own.

He continues reading.

* * *

_So, let's not start at the beginning – that's a little too confusing right now. The river of time doesn't run as smooth as Father told you. Correlation is not causation, though the consequences are the same._

_I'm explaining it badly. Maybe I should start at the beginning._

_In the beginning, you are born, in the middle of a Siege that had already lasted for a generation. Your birth comes in the middle of an upsurge in the Wraith attack. Mother stays at her post until the final moments of labour, shouting orders until the contractions are too close together for her to do anything but shout. Ten minutes after you are born, she is back at her post. A week later, she is back aboard_  Tria _, and three years later she is dead._

_(More or less. Because things are always more complicated than they appear.)_

_Is that the beginning? Or maybe it's this:_

_In the beginning, there is a singularity and in that point is everything that ever was or is or will be. Timeless and terrible, no sentient species has ever devised a torment that could be its equal. You are there in that nothingness for so long that you forget the sound of voices and the feel of sunlight. You forget laughter and happiness. You forget blood and tears. You forget everything but the terrible hole in your soul where your humanity should be and burn and rave at the closing of the day._

_When at last the fight left you, you swear you will do better next time, though you don't know how, because you've done all you could do – all you could ever dream of doing. But still you swear._

_(And then, suddenly, there is a next time.)_

_But that's not the beginning, is it? It's this:_

_You wake up to find Nicolaa dead, her blood staining your skin in ways you'll never be able to wash clean, and you_ know _what you have to do. You run all the way to the_ cathedra _and you tell Atlantis you'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe for as long as she needs protecting. Your life is hers – it has always been hers – and when you wake up next, it's to man aquiver with barely contained energy, the very avatar of curiosity, and you don't know it then, but this is when your life begins._

* * *

* * *

The silence is deafening. Without Icarus to act as a barrier between them, Radek refuses to do much more than acknowledge his existence, as if he can go on avoiding Evan unhindered by the fact they are locked in isolation together. Evan would say something, anything, to force his attention for even a minute, but dares not. Anything he says now will only push Radek farther away. If he allows Radek his distance, he will eventually return. It will never be what he wants. He will never have anything more than the scraps of affection that Radek allows him – but even that is better than not having Radek at all.

It's a sobering thought.

Even more sobering is the realization that he  _always_  does this. He  _always_  attaches himself to the wrong people, the ones unwilling or unable to provide the precocious few things he asks for in a relationship – which includes admitting that their relationship  _is actually a relationship_.

Closing his eyes, Evan lets his head fall back until it hits the couch, and tries to figure out what the hell he keeps doing wrong. He  _tried_  not to fall for Radek. He didn't  _want_  to risk ruining the best friendship he's ever had. And yet, here he is, sitting across from Radek on a couch older than human civilization in a city older than the human  _species_ , trying to figure out how he keeps monumentally failing at human interaction. Aliens and artificial intelligences he can handle. His own species, he cannot.

Too tired to honestly help himself, Evan snorts at the ridiculousness of it all. Radek, however, must take it for a snore, as he says his name almost tentatively.

"Yeah?" he asks tiredly.

"You shouldn't be sleeping right now."

Radek has a point: Doctor Heightmeyer had been  _scared to death_  while asleep in her own bed after a day spent attempting to psychoanalyze Sheppard, and so now the remainder of the medical staff is afraid it will happen to everyone else. Those few that have been having the dreams – himself, Radek, Hyun-Sook Che, and Amanda Cole – have been placed in isolation for their own safety. Safety being a somewhat ambiguous word, as the only  _cure_  anyone has come up with so far is to pump them as full of stimulants as they can before their hearts give out or the sleep deprivation drives them mad. The end result of which is, "I couldn't sleep right now if I tried."

"It certainly looks as if you are trying."

He sighs this time, lifting his head off the couch just enough to fix Radek with a tired look. "Can we please not?"

Radek frowns, confusion overriding the concern painted across his features. " _Can we please not_  what?"

" _This_ ," Evan says heavily, leaning forward to pitch his elbows on his knees and prop his chin in the palm of his left hand. "If you wanna be with me, it's fine, it's great; go right ahead… But if you're gonna go back to ignoring me after all this…" He sucks in a shaky breath. "I can't stand all this back-and-forth. We can be lovers or friends or you can keep on ignoring me 'til the end of days, but you've got to pick one. You might be able to bounce between them, no problem, but I can't, Radek. I thought I could, but I can't. I love you and I can't keep watching you walk away because you're scared or paranoid or whatever it is anymore."


	14. Miles, Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is painfully short. But it resolves some stuff and I'm in this weird mood and... yeah, here it is.

**22 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Radek doesn't say anything for the longest time. He stares at his hands, the better to avoid Evan's eyes. He wants nothing else than to find the magic words that will make Evan change his mind, that will convince him to let them go on as they have been, but he knows there are none. He's fully aware of just how horrible he's been about this, this  _thing_  they have, but he's had to be. He's known from the beginning just how easy it would be to fall for Evan – he'd known it even as he was falling and resolutely telling himself that the descent was in his control.

He falls in love with Evan's quiet competence and his low-key acceptance of everything Pegasus might throw at them. He falls in love with his sober honesty and the silences that are never awkward between them. He falls with the kind-heartedness woven into Evan's bones and with the compassion netted into his very soul and the knowledge that he deserves someone so much better than Radek but has still somehow chosen  _him._  He falls in love and refuses to call it that, because science or not, words have power and love is the most powerful of them all.

It had been easy enough back when Evan had still been a major in the Air Force and might be transferred away at any moment – Radek would never get to keep him, so he might as well take all that he could. It hadn't been serious because it couldn't be and that… that had allowed him to get far closer than he ever should have.

But then Evan became  _praetor_  and  _heres_  and  _permanent_  in a way he'd never been before and that terrified him. Now when Evan leaves him – as he inevitably would – it wouldn't be because he has no choice, but because he's decided Radek  _isn't good enough_.

It's not abandonment issues – Radek came to terms with those years ago, thank you very much, – it's the plain unadulterated knowledge that he's not the kind of person people stay with. Radek is safe and Radek is convenient but Radek is not the type of guy people stay with. People don't want  _safe_  and _convenient_. They want  _Romeo and Juliet_ ; they want  _Antony and Cleopatra_ ; they want the certifiable crazy that is Rodney and Sheppard, willing to bring the universe crashing down around their ears if that's what it takes for them to stay together, and that's just not the kind of person Radek is. One day Evan's going to wake up and realize he chose the wrong person and Radek doesn't know if he can take it.

No, it's better to end it now, before their hearts get broken. It's better to stop this and go back to being just friends while they still can. He needs Evan in his life however he can get and  _just friends_  is better than  _exes who can't stand the sight of each other_.

When he finally has control of his voice, he means to say, "It's over," but what comes out is, "It's not that simple."

"Then  _make_  it that simple," Evan immediately counters. There are no words for the tone he uses then, a little sharp and a little broken, like he's taken a hammer to the  _in case of emergency_  glass around his heart and decided to use the shards as a weapon rather than pulling the alarm that will allow them to end this all. (And maybe his metaphor is a little forced, but he's not slept in three days and has so many stimulants in his system he's about three seconds from shaking out of his skin. It's the best he can do on short notice).

"I'm just looking out for the both of us," he doesn't say. Nor does he pull out his readymade list of all the reasons their relationship was a bad idea to begin with. Instead what comes out is, "I don't want to lose you."

"I'm not going anywhere, Radek."

"You say that now."

"What does that even  _mean_? I'm not going anywhere. I've  _never_  been going anywhere. You're the one that keeps pushing me away."

"You will."

"What the actual  _fuck_ , Radek?"

Radek can count on one hand the number of times he's heard Evan curse without using his thumb and its appearance now startles him so much that he glances up. This turns out to be a mistake, as the moment he does Evan catches his eyes and he can't look away. All the reasons ready on his lips – imminent death and alien priestesses and the non-zero chance that  _things just won't work out_ – fall away.

"I don't know where you're getting this idea," Evan says holding his gaze.

Radek should be searching for counterarguments, but for the moment the only thought that crosses his mind is how grey Evan's eyes look in this light, that's how badly he needs sleep.

When he offers none, Evan continues, "I love you, Radek. I love what we have, even if it makes me want to rip out my hair half the time. I miss you when I've not seen you for a couple hours and I'm getting just as bad as Icarus about finding excuses to swing by your lab, or would be if you weren't avoiding me half the time I try. I can't imagine caring for anyone else half as much as I do you, so you don't have to worry about me leaving. I couldn't if I wanted to."

"That's not what you were saying five minutes ago."

"I was trying to be a gentlemen," Evan tells him, sounding just a little bit defensive.

That's all it takes to startle a laugh out of him. It's light at first, as much a shock to Radek as it is to Evan, but deepens quickly, stealing his breath and making his abdominal muscles ache from overuse. " _Jsme… Jsme taková idioti,_ " he manages to mutter, catching Evan's crushed expression before it has time to truly settle and turning it into the beginnings of a smile.

Then he's on his feet, closing the distance between them more quickly than he would have thought possible. Evan wraps one hand around the back of his neck, pulling him closer before their lips have even managed to touch, but the angle's wrong and it's not close enough, so Radek braces himself against the couch, a hand on either side of Evan's hips as he ducks his head further. But that's still not close enough, not after a month of partial separation or a week of outright avoidance, which is how he ends up in Evan's lap, hands skimming his body until they tangle in his no-longer-regulation hair.

He could happily spend the rest of eternity like this, lost in the feel Evan's hot mouth and the still-forbidden feel of his hand sliding under Radek's tunic and creeping up his back, but Evan has other plans. Somehow he manages to flip them so that Radek ends up with his back flat against the cushions with Evan looming over him, determined to try to touch him everywhere at once and making a significant amount of progress on that front. Something in Evan's eyes distracts him momentarily – a strange, worshipful sort of look, almost as if he cannot believe he's allowed to have this, – but his confusion doesn't last for more than a few seconds before he's lost in it all again.

He pulls away just long enough to steal a breath and pant a curse at the Ancient's obsession with laces into the curve of Evan's neck before they're kissing again, more deeply now. He was an idiot to think he could ever give this up and-


	15. Miles, Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know this is the shortest yet, but this has literally been sitting on my hard drive for two weeks now and I've hated everything that I've written since. RL has been an absolute b**** lately, and the harder I try to write, the worse it gets. Please, enjoy this.

**22 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

Every single piece of medical equipment in the Observation Room screams out at once, a cacophony of high-pitched wails and shrill screeches loud enough to stop Evan's heart dead in its tracts for half-a-minute, if not more. He springs away from Radek instantly, on hand going instinctively to his chest, feeling for the heartbeat that's been shocked out of step from the rest of his vital functions, the other rising to his ear for his comm.

Evan's earwig, however, is not there. Cursing, he digs around in the cushions for his comm and finds it, inexplicably, on the floor two feet away. Deciding to save the problem of how it got there for another day, Evan slams it back into his ear and activates the first channel he comes to:

"All medical staff to the Observation Room immediately."

After barely a pause Amanda Cole's voice comes over the line, which is gratifying if not exactly helpful. She and Hyun-Sook Che are locked in a smaller isolation unit three floors down, also having fallen victim to Icarus' debilitating memory-dreams. "Evan? What's wrong?" From her tone, she's clearly handling being locked up, however temporarily, even worse than Evan is – or, rather, had been, before he and Radek had  _finally_  managed to sort out at least some of their problems.

"It's Icarus. Is Doctor Beckett there with you?" he asks, glancing towards the hospital bed. As far as he can tell, Icarus is just asleep, but every piece of Terran medical equipment in the room is screaming that the patient is dead, dead in every possible way that can be measured by man, and that nothing any doctor could do could possibly change that.

"He was, but he took off running as soon as his comm went off. He should be his way already. It shouldn't be long. It doesn't take longer than ninety seconds to get from anywhere in the IHC to anywhere else – we timed it. Sheppard will be fine. He's too stubborn to die and Carson's too stubborn to let him." Amanda pauses, as if considering what she's about to say. "He's not going to die, Evan. Carson is going to find a cure and we are getting out of this alive – all of us."

Evan's not sure what to say in the face of such relentless optimism.

There once was a time when Evan would have followed his adoptive father to hell and back. He would have done anything for Icarus, because Icarus was the kind of man men wanted to follow. He made people want to be better than themselves – made them think that they could do anything, become anything, because Icarus believed in them and Icarus was never wrong about people. Even before he had been declared a living god, his benevolence, resilience, and physical courage had made him all but divine to his men. He was Alexander before Babylon, Hannibal before Zama, Caesar before the Senate – all the great warrior-kings of antiquity, because there were no modern generals who could compare. He came from an age where personality mattered just as much, if not more than, military prowess and he was the best. In everything, he was the best.

But that time has passed. Once the most incorruptible of men, the unbridled power of a god had made him as perfidious as any goa'uld. And how could it not? Others had done far worse with far less. What had made it so awful is that none of them – not even Atlantis – had believed that Icarus would succumb to the temptation. After all, he'd given up ten thousand years to protect Atlantis. How could a man like that fall prey to the sins that consumed lesser men?

But he had.

He had and one day Evan will be able to forgive him for that, because he's quickly coming to the realization that it was never Icarus' choice become  _Haereticus_. Maybe the timetable had been his to command, but the moment people began to worship him as a god, his fall had been assured. No matter how good a man Icarus had once been, there is no person, of any species, anywhere in this universe that could be handed the unbounded and unchallenged power of a god and not fall prey to its abuses – Evan understands that now. It's been a hard realization, but a necessary one. The man he would have died for did exist: he had just been as broken and fallible as the rest of them and they'd never seen it.

But god or devil, that man is not, was not, and has never been suicidal. He'll sacrifice himself in an instant if that's what it takes to protect the ones he loves, but Icarus would never actively try to kill himself. Evan has to believe that or else give up on everything he still believes in and that way madness lies.

His hand falls away from his earwig. "He's not trying to kill himself," he says, barely loud enough to be heard over the mechanical caterwauling coming from Icarus' medical equipment.

Which is, of course, the moment the medical staff arrives.


	16. Miles, Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) This is a "Doppleganger" rewrite for those of you who've not yet caught on. 2) There is some quoting from Paradise Los, which I actually dispise but is a useful source of quotes. 3) In the story, about 51 earth hours have passed. Because days are shorter Nova Loegria. And hours. 4) I'm off to Squee Weekend after class tomorrow, so if there's a delay in answering, that's why. 5) Please enjoy

**{?} – {?}**

" _Ave_ , Licinus," the voice says in the old way. The fact he finds it  _old_  is momentarily stranger to Iohannes than the voice itself, a discordant note amid his jumbled thoughts too jarring not to notice. He can recall nothing of what he has been told occurred between the moment he sat down in the  _cathedra_  ten thousand years ago and the moment he woke in the infirmary this afternoon, yet he thinks the greeting  _old_. In his memories, Nicolaa had said just the same to him just this morning, yet hearing it now seems strange and out of place, a throwback to an era better left forgotten.

He opens his eyes.

The ceiling of the Gate Room stares back at him, silent and cold. The glow from the left tells him that the  _porta_  is open; the shadows on his right that it late in the night, creeping towards the small hours of the morning.

"I've been waiting for you a long time," the voice continues. There's something familiar about it – familiar and carefully disinterested, as if afraid he'll give away too much anger if he allows himself to speak freely – but the only thing Iohannes can say clearly about it is that it  _is_  male.

Iohannes coughs, his lungs protesting his attempt to sit up. "That so?" he manages to ask, just as causally, and gets his feet under him before glancing about for the speaker.

He's scarcely recognizable. The uniform he wears is unfamiliar, only borrowing themes from the Terran  _legata_  he'd been introduced to, but obviously of the same design. Long black sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, beneath bright patches of colour on both shoulders. The shoulder boards are empty, the collar open; the gait easy, and yet… And yet it is Iohannes' face the speaker wears, and that alone is enough to set off alarm bells where others would find none. He knows what games he plays. He knows better to make the same mistakes he incites in others.

His duplicate gives him a twisted, macabre smile, as if he knows exactly what Iohannes is thinking and thinks him a fool for feeling any sort of control over the situation. "Yep."

"Mind telling me why?"

"What good would that do?"

"I think all this deserves an explanation, don't you?"

"You say that like there's a simple answer."

"Not everything has to be complicated."

"Nothing's ever simple either." His duplicate starts down the Gate Room stairs, taking the steps two a time. Except for the clothes, he appears as if he could very well be but another version of Iohannes himself as he stands with his back towards the  _porta_ , clad in the bone white uniform of a Lantean Guardsman made hoary with age, but…

But there's something sinister about this copy, something dark and slick and spiteful. Despite the illuminated lettering on the risers, all the shadows seem to bend towards his duplicate, his twisted doppelgänger, though light gathers in the whites of his eyes and the spaces between his words.

 _No light, but rather darkness visible_ , he finds himself thinking.  _The palpable obscure._

"I'm not afraid of you."

The duplicate laughs – a deep laugh, honest and true that cuts him to the bone. "You can only lie to yourself for so long, Licinus. I'm the only thing you've ever been afraid of – not the war, not the Wraith, not even losing all the friends you don't remember you had: just little old me. Because I've been here all along. I've always existed, waiting, because what do the Wraith matter when under your skin is a demon just waiting to be released?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you?" the doppelgänger asks, a dangerous note in his voice as he takes those final few steps to the lower level. "'Lantis never saw it. The Terrans certainly never did. They thought you were strong enough to use the power they gave you wisely, but we both know better, don't we Licinus?"

"Now I  _really_  don't know what you're talking about. I-"

"Erased the last three years of your memory? I know. But that doesn't change the fact that the others were right all along: you are a danger to every sentient being in the universe. D'you have any idea how many people have died because of you, Licinus? How many of your friends have gone to their graves because you failed them? You brought this on yourself and there is  _nothing_  you can do to stop it."

Furious, his duplicate aims a punch at Iohannes' jaw, as if all this talk has been but a prelude to the bloodshed he desires to follow.

He ducks, but it is only a diversion. He gets a boot to the gut before he can scramble backwards. It knocks the breath right out of him and nearly his lunch, but Iohannes manages to stay on his feet. He catches a backhand to his face before he can return the blow. For his – blocked – right hook, he gets a punch to the stomach and his legs swept out from under him.

Iohannes lands hard, stunned.

His duplicate presses his advantage, kicking him once, twice, three times in the belly before circling him to repeat the movement on the other side. He manages four kicks there, digging the steel tip of his books deep into the soft tissue of Iohannes' gut, before stalking away, disgusted.

"Get up. C'mon, Licinus.  _Fight_!"

Iohannes pushes himself onto elbows, knees with a struggle. "If you want to kill me, kill me," he coughs around a mouthful of blood.

"Eventually," the doppelgänger assures him, leaning in close. "It's your fault, y'know. All of it. You told yourself it was inevitable, that it was preordained, that no one could have stopped it – not even the god-devil you became. But you were wrong. You could have stopped it at any time. But you didn't. You choose not to, all because you were a lost little boy who didn't want to be alone any longer. You allowed tragedies on the chance that it would lead the victors to Atlantis – and to you. Trillions upon trillions of senseless, needless deaths – all because you were afraid of the dark."

"That's not true," he insists, not knowing the meaning of the words he says. His head is spinning. He can barely breathe. His vision is whiting at the edges and he has no idea what's happening except that he wants it to be over with. He just wants to escape whatever nightmare he's trapped inside so he can begin rebuilding his life, one recovered memory at a time. He wants to live. "It had to be like this. For good to win, it had to be this way."

"It's your fault Heightmeyer's dead. Your fault Elizabeta is dead-"

Something within Iohannes snaps. He launches himself at his duplicate, awkward and ungainly and uncoordinated, but still he somehow manages to tackle his doppelgänger to the ground.

They grapple across the Gate Room floor, a sprawling mess of elbows and near-escapes that only serves to bring them closer to the open  _porta_. Neither of them is particularly skilled at hand-to-hand combat, but rage gives Iohannes the upper hand despite his injuries. Even so, it is luck and determination alone that allow him to pin the monster with his face to the ground.

Iohannes has a bruised jaw, a blackened eye. His stomach might well have been impaled on his spinal column at some point and he'll be pissing blood for a month if makes it out of this at all. But he's got the monster – Icarus it calls itself, he realizes – pinned, and that's all that matters.

He goes for his knife, but it's not in its sheath at the small of his back. It is gone, as is the  _manuballista_ that should be holstered at his side. He has no weapons, no way to kill this monster but with his fists, but he hasn't the strength.

Iohannes wraps his hands around his duplicate's neck, but to no avail. Icarus unseats him and pins him to the floor, scant feet from the  _porta_ , and when  _he_  goes for  _his_  KA-BAR, it's there. "Death is better than you deserve, but it's the best I can do," he says, holding the tip knife to over his heart.

But Iohannes wants to live. He has never wanted to live more than he has in this moment. He's made mistakes, more than his share, but it was always, always with the best intentions.

He grabs the blade with his hands, slicing his palms in the process and turning them to ribbons as he wrenches the knife from his duplicate's hands. When it clatters to the ground, Iohannes bucks his opponent and grabs the knife, stabbing Icarus in the back. Iohannes yanks it free to a spray of blood and plunges it into whatever soft tissue he can find over and over and over again, until his doppelgänger finally falls forward, limp and defeated.

Exhausted, Iohannes slumps to the floor beside him, limp and bloody, and finds he can no longer hold his eyes open. Sleep would be so welcome right now…

* * *

* * *

**24 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

The shock has worn off by the time he makes it to Sam's office.

"Do you know anything about Ancient funerals?" he asks, sinking into one of the armchairs that have been in room since Elizabeth's tenure – pieces of furniture that had just appeared in the earliest days of the First Expedition without any apparent rhyme or reason. The rest of the senior staff had put it down to Grodin's superior administrative skills and never questioned it (why would they when there had been so many other things to question in those early days, from John to the Wraith to if they would ever see Earth again), but Rodney had always thought it was John's doing. John knows where to find anything in Atlantis that wanted finding, from mattresses softer than a slab of concrete (a warehouse on the edge of the North Pier and the Inner City) to superconductive materials (scattered throughout the sublevels, usually in the most deserted corridors possible). Armchairs are easily in the realm of his ability.

 _Were_. They  _were_  in the realm of his ability and are not any longer because John is dead and never coming back. He has found everything he will ever find. If that includes the peace he was looking for, Rodney will never know.

"Doctor Becket made the call then?"

"He only held off as long as he did because Evan asked him not to."

"Not you?"

"It's hard to argue with a corpse," he informs her, looking anywhere but her eyes. Rodney's had enough of sympathy for a lifetime. If he has to see it reflected in anyone else's eyes ever again he won't be responsible for his actions.

He looks at her office instead and takes in all the changes she's made to it in the scant few days she's been administrator of the city. The furniture's the same, but gone are the plants and the hideous tchotchke from a dozen worlds that Elizabeth had filled it with and John had never bothered to change. Instead there are picture frames everywhere – pictures of her old team, pictures of her wedding, pictures of her son – interspersed with the shadowboxes military types uses to show off their medals and the flag they'd given her when her father died. There are the usual gewgaws as well, but they actually manage to fit into somebody's idea of décor this go-around.

It's one of the pictures on the end that catches his eye: a candid in a plain wooden frame, taken in the questionable light of the SGC, of SG-1 dressed for some undercover mission – something involving the Lucian Alliance, he guesses, given the amount of leather. Rodney looks at it and can't help wondering if there are actually any pictures of  _their_  team floating around. There are some from that first year with just him and John and Teyla, Ford being the shutterbug among them, and a couple that people have snatched since of John and Teyla or John and Ronon sparring, but none he thinks that have the whole team.

Rodney's never actually looked at the wedding photos – he's been much too busy dealing with one crisis after the next. Maybe he'll find something in there.

"I'm sorry, Rodney."

"It's not your fault," Rodney says, his voice sounding distant to his ears. He almost doubts whether he spoke at all. The shock is gone – there is a body this time, which he's spent the last two, almost three local days watching for any sign that this death will be as temporary as the last – but the cold fact remains that John is gone, just gone. He's almost lost him so many times to the most extraordinary of things; to lose him now in a hospital bed seems like a bad joke. The only thing extraordinary about it had been the way every single organ in John's body had shut down all at once, functioning reasonably one moment and not at all the next.

To her everlasting credit, Sam is all business, or enough of it as to make no difference. "So you want to hold an Ancient funeral."

"He  _was_  an Ancient."

Sam ignores the comment, which is probably for the best. "Daniel might have come across something in his research. Would you like me to dial Earth and see if he can't send some of what he's found?"

"That's not the problem. I know exactly how an Ancient funeral goes. I just don't want to stick him in a retort and leave 'Lantis' waste reclamation system to deal with the rest."

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Sam stand, walk around her desk, and move towards him as if to embrace him before realizing the folly of her plan and leaning against the nearside instead, as if that had been her intention all along. "You know," she says almost delicately, "you don't have to follow the Ancient funeral to the letter."

"I don't want to turn it into a three-ring circus either."

"I'm sure we can figure out something in between."

"I don't want to  _figure out something in between_. I just want John not to be dead." Rodney lets out a heavy head and leans his head back, closing his eyes to avoid having to look at the ceiling and all that that implies. "Sorry. Sorry, it's just- it wasn't supposed to end this way. I mean, I am –  _was,_  sorry,  _was_  – his husband. You'd think I'd know if he wanted to kill himself."

"We don't know that's what happened."

"How else are we supposed to take it? Even if he  _was_  just trying to erase the last however many years of his memories, isn't that the same thing? The guy he was when all of this started is not the man he was three years ago."

"That man erased chunks of your memory and declared himself a living god."

"I know. And I should hate him for it – I even do, sometimes – but he was still John. I still love him."

"Even after all that?"

"Even after all that." Leaning forward, he wipes a hand across his face and says, somewhat belatedly, "Thank you."

" _Thank you?_  Thank you for what?"

"For taking this job. For trying to help John. For listening to me."

Mildly, "We're friends, Rodney. You don't have to thank me for any of that."

There's really nothing Rodney can say to that.

Perhaps sensing this, Sam places a hand on his shoulder and gives him a little shake. "I'm going to have Chuck dial New Athos and ask Teyla back here. She should be able to help you figure out how you want to handle the funeral arrangements. But until then you should try to get some rest. You don't have to decide everything tonight and you certainly don't have to do it alone."

* * *

Maybe the shock hasn't completely worn off, because Rodney finds himself back in the morgue without any clear memory of how he got there, let alone of having decided to return.

He's not alone: Evan's sitting on one of the mortuary tables across from John's body, legs dangling over the edge like a exhausted child just waiting to be told it was time to go home. "I didn't want to leave him alone," he says by way of explanation.

"He's dead," Rodney answers flatly, moving to stand next to his examination table. He can't be near John's. As pale as he is, particularly in the stark white scrubs they'd dressed him in after the first time they tried to restart his heart, he only looks like he's sleeping. If Rodney looks too closely, he can still trick himself into thinking he'll wake up any second now, and that's the last thing any of them need. "I don't think he cares."

"Rodney-"

"Don't – just don't, Evan."

"It thought he was just trying to finish what he started," Evan continues, sounding smaller than he ought. "I thought that if we just left him to it…"

"I think he did just what he set out to do."

Evan shakes his head violently in protest. "This isn't want he wanted. It  _can't_  be what he wanted. Icarus wouldn't kill himself – sacrifice himself, yes, but not kill himself."

"If he thought it was to protect us, he would."

"What good does his dying do anyone? We  _need_  him. We can lie to ourselves all we want about defeating the Wraith and holding together the Confederation with out him, but we  _need_  him. We can't do it without him. He's the only one that knows what he's doing. He's the only one with any sort of  _plan_."

Rodney has nothing to say to that. He feels like he has nothing to say  _at all_  anymore, as if John had taken all his words with him when he dies. But no, that makes no sense. It's more like John had been the only one he'd ever really wanted to talk to and, now that he's gone, it doesn't seem worth the effort to try explaining himself to other people. John always got him. Even before they were anything more than friends, John had understood him in a way no one else ever had.

Or maybe John had just listened – listened where no one else had before, to all the things he said and all the things he didn't say. The only one who could ever hope to understand how he feels about John being dead is  _John_ , which helps nobody.

He doesn't know what he's supposed to do now that John's gone. He can't go back to that empty, meaningless life he had before, not now that he knows there's something better out there. He can't go back to his lab, not when he knows that there's no chance of John ever trying to drag him out of it again, no chance of John perching on the countertops and teasing him about all the things humans think they understand. He can't walk out this door, not when the next time he'll see his husband is in a casket, to be placed into a retort and reduced to his component atoms, so that ashes can out into the universe, until all that he was mixes with all that ever was, forming new stars and new planets. John would have wanted it that way.

Rodney doesn't know what he wants.

Quite suddenly, Rodney can't stand to be in the room any longer. He needs to get out – away – as far as possible. He can't be in the same room something that looks like John but isn't. The John he loved is gone. The John he loved has been gone for  _ages_  and will never be back because there's no such thing as miracles. There's never been such a thing as miracles. Miracles can't exist in a universe filled with false gods and fake gods and would-be devils.

Rodney can't understand how John's dead. He's always come back before. Why not this time? Why not one last time?

"Pops?" Evan asks, less hesitantly now. "Are you alright?"

"Get me out of here," he chokes.

Evan jumps off the mortuary slab and immediately places a hand on his shoulder; the same one Sam had shaken earlier. "Alright."

Before they've taken two steps towards the door, there's a sharp intake of breath behind them, impossibly loud in the sharp, bitter silence of the morgue.

"Rodney?" the voice asks on the exhale, sounding bone tired and not a little broken, but still so recognizably John that he probably sprains something spinning around. "Why is it so cold?"

Rodney blinks. John is alive.

John is alive.

He has no idea how, but John is alive.


	17. Gubernator, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are finally out of the eternal July 2007... barely. 1) More on the new base psychologist next installment. 2) The timeline of S3 is here but what it boils down to is "Ascensiones" was in March/April and Elizabeth died on 17 August 2006. 3) There are 6 planets in the Loegrian system. They are, in order: Latunda, Vacuna, Suedela, Nova Loegria, Arimanius, and Cybelle. Nova Loegria has 5 moons, Arimanius 27, and Cybelle 18. They all have Roman/Arthurian meanings. Arimanius is an obscure Roman Britian god who possibly came up through the Mithraic tradition, who may be the Roman cognate of Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrianism "destructive spirit". Plutarch calls him "the worst spirit" and even "Satan." 4) Nebreus is one of the Alteran urbs-naves, destroyed in 8273 BC, about two years before Ianus is born. His mother, Beatrix Aquilidea Nebriae Tribuna, was one of the refugees who fled to Atlantis, making Iohannes 1/4th Nebrian. His nomen, Ianideus, follows the Nebrian convention. In this 'verse, they are also the builders of the short-lived Orion and the research station on which it was found.

**1 August, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

“John? Are you all right?”

Iohannes lets out a shaky breath, the better part of it reflected back by the hands covering his face. “Yeah,” he says as steadily as possible, almost managing to convince himself that all is well and he is not evil and they’ll get through this in the end. Almost. “I’ll be out in a second.”

He waits until he hears Rodney’s footsteps retreat on the other side of the bathroom door before lowering his hands and glancing towards the darkened ceiling.

“’Lantis?”

//You are fine, _pastor_ ,// the city assures him, her voice, like her song, a welcome caress. As old as he is, trapped inside too new skin while his mind attempts to cope with memories stretching back to the birth of the universe and beyond, he feels painfully young, as if rebuilding his flesh from stardust and moonbeams has turned back his biological clock. Iohannes is twenty-seven billion years old and he wants nothing more than for Atlantis to whisper in his ear and tell him stories like she did when he was a child, convinced that Father would end the war any day now and he would never have to hear her scream when the energy weapons hit her shields again. //You will be fine.//

“You’re a degenerate liar. I don’t know why I listen to a word you say.”

//You’ve gotten through worse than this before. You’ll get through this as well.//

“Now I know you’re lying,” he snorts, a hint of a smile on his face as he uses the wall to clamber to his feet. He takes a moment to lean his forehead against the cold tiles, gathering strength, before feeling his way around the glass partition that divides the shower from the rest of the bathroom.

He used to hate the darkness. After ten thousand years trapped within it, bound to the _cathedra_ , waiting for the salvation he could not be certain was coming, how could he not?

But now? Now he has lived twice the age of the universe. In that time, for most of that time, there were no stars. No planets. No people. Until very recently (relatively speaking), everything was nothingness. Darkness. Void. And as much as he loves creation and as much as he begged and fought and pleaded for there to be something rather than nothing, sometimes it is just too much to take in.

So much noise.

So much laughter.

So much pain.

He’s finding that he needs a few moments of darkness – emptiness – nothingness – every now and then to keep his bearings since his return from death. The universe is too much with him, but in the darkness Iohannes can find himself again.

Iohannes staggers over to the sink and splashes water on his face. Unable to see his reflection, he manages to convince himself that he at least looks as if all is well even if things remain jumbled on the inside, before stumbling out into the bedroom. He pauses there for socks – he’s always cold now and the metal pins in his legs hold the chill – and an Air Force sweatshirt ‘Helianus had thrown his way when Carson had finally released him from the infirmary the day before. 

He can do this.

Atlantis opens the door.

* * *

* * *

 

“You okay?” Rodney asks, hearing footfalls behind him. “You were in there for a long time.”

“It’s just all these drugs making me sick. I’ll get over it.”

“You’d probably feel better if you ate something.”

“Food just makes it worse.”

Rodney frowns, wanting to press the issue, but getting John to admit that anything is wrong at all is in itself a minor miracle. He doesn’t want a fight – he just wants to be happy that John’s alive and sane and not evil – but Rodney knows he’ll get one if he asks anything further. But still, he’s hardly seen John eat anything at all since they released him from the IHC. With all of the antidepressants, alpha-blockers, and mood stabilizers the new base psychologist put him on before letting him go, he should be eating _something_ , even if it’s only thin soup to get his stomach used to the idea of eating again. “If you’re sure,” is what he settles for instead.

“I’m sure.”

He means to leave it at that, he truly does, only John has about as much colour as his corpse did. Leaning against in the kitchen doorway, practically drowning in an oversized Air Force sweatshirt, John looks worse than he did before his release. He’s putting on a good show of it – John always does – but a stiff breeze could knock him out of commission right now. It’s going to be a long, hard road coming back from Ascension, and, “It’s just, the last thing you need right now is hypoglycaemic shock on top of every-“

“I’m fine, Rodney.”

“You were dead-“

“And now I’m not.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that you were inexplicably dead for _fifty-one hours_? Or that you are _not dead_ now and _nobody_ has a clue how?”

“I’m alive,” John insists, crossing his arms haughtily. The sleeves of his borrowed sweatshirt are so long on him that several inches of cuff poke out, empty, on either side, giving him a somewhat ridiculous, childlike look that runs counter to the overwhelming age of his eyes. Even before he Ascended they were old, but now they are ancient, eternal, and too bright for his face, as if some trace of his former power lingers, visible only there. “I’m mortal again. I thought that would make you happy.”

“I _am_ happy.”

“Then why are you complaining?” he demands, pushing away from the doorframe and taking an agitated step forward before pausing, turning heel as if to leave before and burying his hands in his hair and turning back to face him. Somewhat desperately, he continues, “This is our chance to have a normal life together, the kind we always wanted. I don’t get why you can’t just accept that.”

“First off,” Rodney says, making as violent a gesture as possible while burdened by a pair of thermoses. When it fails miserably, he sets them both on the counter and glares at them rather than John, who’d only pout, “when have you ever known me to _just accept_ anything? And secondly, I happen to _like_ you being alive. Forgive me if I’m rather invested in seeing you stay that way!”

“I’m not going to die. Not anytime soon, anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“See, I was willing to believe that when you were Ascended and had all the knowledge in the universe tucked into you head. I’m less willing to believe it after I spent the last month watching you die _three times_. Three times, John. _Three_.”

“Yes. I know. I was there. I can count.”

“I don’t know, can you? Because three seems a bit excessive, even for you. I mean, I’m used to you risking life and limb and my blood pressure doing something incredibly suicidal once, twice a year, but three times in four weeks is just pushing the limits of sanity – yours and mine.”

Rodney is ninety percent sure that the only reason John doesn’t shout his next words are because he hasn’t the strength. Instead his voice is barely above a whisper, filled with such so much need for everything just to be _normal_ again that it’s like a knife to the gut. “I told you, I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re both fine and for once we have an actual evening to ourselves, so why don’t we make the most of it?”

He bites his lip and shakes his head, a gesture he knows he picked up from John only after he does it. “You’re not fine,” he says, hastily continuing as John bristles, “You will be, but you’re not now.”

John deflates at this, somehow managing to become even more lost in the sweatshirt than he already is. Slumping back against the doorframe, he sighs, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You probably should, at some point.”

“Didn’t work out so well for Heightmeyer, did it?”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “I was under the impression that you just stared at her until she made a diagnosis by process of elimination alone.”

John looks sheepish. Pale, tired, and… sheepish.

“Oh my god. You don’t remember. You don’t remember _any_ of it.”

John comes alive at the accusation, pushing away from the wall and gathering himself to his full height. The effect is somewhat undermined by the oversized sweatshirt, but the result is about the same as throwing a couple of ice cubes on a bushfire – pointless and somewhat absurd. “I remember stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Plenty.”

“John-“

“Look, it’s no big deal-“

“ _No big deal_!”

“The rest will come back.”

“You don’t know that,” Rodney contends, anger giving way to tired acquiescence.

An argument is the last thing he wants right now, yet here they are, well on their way to shouting the most horrible things at each other. If this keeps up, there will be no sign of John when the smoke finally clears. The Ancient will have disappeared into the depths of his city, not to be seen again unless it’s under his own terms. And the last thing John needs right now is to be alone.

(Who is he kidding? The last thing he wants is to be alone again either. Rodney’s not sure he’ll be happy until he’s spent the next couple of years of his life looking over and making sure John’s still with him, John’s still alive.)

“I have to believe it,” he says, voice rough as he visibly holds himself back from saying anything truly unforgiveable. It’s not like him, but it lends him come colour at least.

Rodney breathes in deeply, doing his own level best to keep things passably civil. It’s harder than he remembers. When did the get to the point where it was easier to raise their voices than actually talk? Why did they let it get that far? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’d hoped they would come back by now.”

“Of course you did,” he doesn’t say. Instead he asks, “What _do_ you remember?”

John bites his lower lip, eyes darting toward the floor. For a moment, Rodney worries John won’t say anything at all – that he’ll just turn and leave and they’ll be right back to where they started. But then, after a nudge from ‘Lantis, he says, “Bits and pieces mostly… I remember being in a hallway and thinking you were dead… There was ice… ice and blood, but none of it’s clear. All I get are flickers. Sensations. Ghosts of memories.”

“And that’s the last thing you remember?”

“Before the morgue? Yeah.”

There is a chair behind him. There must be, for when his knees give out he does not fall to the ground. “John, that was over four months ago.”

“I know. ‘Lantis told me.”

It doesn’t matter what ‘Lantis told him. Four months – that’s everything. That’s their wedding. That’s the erasure of his memories. That’s the Asuran Counterstrike. It may as well be a lifetime.

“What else?” He scarcely recognizes his voice. “What else are you missing?”

“I don’t… None of it’s all that clear… The last thing I really remember is being in Elizabeta’s office they day you found the address for Asuras.”

A year, almost to the day – that’s how much John is missing. Not just the wedding, but also the Second Exodus and Hegira, the Alteran Massacre and the establishment of the Confederation of Pegasus. John has changed the face of universe – and he remembers almost none of it.

“I’ve remembered a couple things, though.” There it is – there’s the John he remembers. He still sounds tired, maybe even a little lost, but he’s still John. Underneath it all, after everything that’s happened, John is still John, and that’s all that really matters. “I’m not sure how useful they are, but at least it’s something.”

His voice is still distant, but Rodney can at least recognize it as his own. “Like what?” he asks.

John glances toward the ceiling. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

* * *

 

They go out onto the roof. There’s already a stack of quilts waiting for them, their storage unit miraculously undisturbed by recent events. John spreads one out on the rooftop before pulling him down to the blanket.

“So I was trying to figure out why I chose this planet. It doesn’t have anything going for it besides a big ocean, but ‘Lantis would’ve taken another ground landing if that was all we could find. It makes no sense to come here when there were plenty of other, closer systems that fit the bill.”

“But then it hit me.” He takes Rodney’s hand and points it towards a red-tinged spec about fifteen degrees above the celestial equator. “That’s Arimanius.”

This, of course, means nothing to Rodney, and he says as much.

“It’s a planet – just your average, run-of-the-mill gas giant. It’s not particularly large, has about the usual number of moons, and has no interesting cloud features of which to speak.”

“Why bother naming it then?”

“’Cause its got one of the most interesting moons in the galaxy – not quite as big as Terra’s, but just about as massive, and all the volcanic activity an enterprising species might want if they were looking to experiment with geothermal energy.”

That catches his attention. “You mean there’s an Ancient outpost there.”

“A Nebrian one, yes. They abandoned it when Tarquinus. Either they left in a hurry or they figured the moon would do the work of destroying it for them.”

“But it didn’t?”

“It didn’t.”

“And why’s that important?”

“I don’t know,” John admits, still staring at the sky. “All I know is that it’s imperative we go there. Soon. There’s something important there… Something we need to solve the puzzle.”

“What puzzle?”

John shakes his head. “I don’t know.”


	18. Gubernator, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes! Yes, I know, it took forever to get this done, but combine writer's block with the busiest month ever and you have this October. I'm spending more time on campus than I am at home and between work, my scholarship commitments, the tutoring I do and the various other bits and bobs I've gotten dragged into, it's a wonder this ever got written at all.   
> 1) Vindicta is one of two Victoria-class lintres John built while Ascended. Her name means vengence and she's the linter John prefers. 2) Erecura is the 7th moon of Arimanus, the 5th planet in the Loegrian system, and is an obsucure diety related to Persiphone. Which makes sense because Arimanus is a type of devil. 3) Yes, I know Alison Porter in SGA is a physist of some sort, but the actress who plays her also played Ezri Dax in DS9 and that is how I see her always. So now she is a psychologist - and about ten years younger than she appears in SGA, for late 20s. 4) Putting these two halves together feels vaguely scizophrenic to me. I hope it works out.

**2 August, 2007 _– in via Erecurae_**

Like everything else aboard _Vindicta_ , the engine room appears not so much as to have been designed as ripped straight from the minds of Gene Rodenberry, Isaac Asimov, and the folks behind the reimagined _Battlestar Galactica_.

While not quite as elegant as the Ancient ships they’ve managed to recover – _Aurora, Thetis,_ and the short-lived _Orion_ – the _Victoria_ -class battleship is still a marvel of engineering, seamlessly melding Ancient style with Tau’ri substance. The upper eleven decks are a warren of rooms and corridors, following some design aesthetic incomprehensible to human minds, but the lowest is given over entirely to the engine room, which in turn is given over to the pair of hyperdrive generators that run the length of the vessel. For what Sam presumes are stability reasons, these have been placed directly along the spine of the ship, with only a two-metre wide walkway between them.

She finds Rodney working on the starboard generator near the aft of the ship, apparently engaged in a lively argument with the instrument panel:

“Alright you ungrateful waste of metal,” he says, gesturing testily at the exposed wiring of offending technology with a Phillips-head in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, “you listen to me: there is absolutely no reason for you to be malfunctioning: none at all. You were working perfectly after the battle, so I can only assume this is some sort of payback for ignoring you since we came back from Asuras. And if that’s the case, take it up with your _pater_ , because it is entirely his fault.”

“Rodney McKay,” she begins, causing him to jump half-a-mile in surprise, “please tell me that you and your husband did not build a warship in lieu of adopting like normal gay couples.”

Yanking his robes off the nearby railing, he uses them to dab at the coffee now covering the front of his tunic. “Blame Rory,” he tells her with a glare. “She got it into her head that John’s her father and now so do the rest of them. And you owe me a new cup of coffee.”

“I didn’t think _Vindicta_ was self-aware.”

“She’s not,” Rodney says, tossing his ruined robes back over the railing. “At least, not like ‘Lantis or Rory. It takes thousands of years to get to that point. But we copied most the code for her secondary systems directly from _Aurora_ , so _Victoria_ and _Vindicta_ have about the same level of sentience as a cat – right down to the breaking things to get peoples’ attention.” He turns back to the instrument panel, “So don’t you think for one minute that I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, young lady.”

Sam can’t help her laugh. “I always suspected you’d be the parent that makes sure the kids eat their vegetables.” For a moment she pauses, then, “Have you two ever thought of having kids of your own – real kids, I mean?

“Could you see us with kids?” he snorts, closing up the instrument panel.

“I think John would love to be a dad.”

“Are you kidding? He’d be over the moon. But he’ll never go for it, not while the war is still going on.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Actually, I do.”

“So you have talked about it.”

“Something like that…” Rodney mutters, toeing aside the coffee cup, now empty save for the Phillips-head screwdriver, and collecting his ruined robes from the railing. He pulls it on – oil stains and Martinique embroidery and all – and gestures towards the nearest set of rings, some quarter mile down the walkway. “Was there something you actually wanted, or were you just asking to see if Jake might have some intellectual equals when he grows up?”

“Actually,” she says, moving to walk along side him, “I was just wanted to ask how John was doing.”

Snorting again, “Would you believe me if I said fine?”

“No.”

This time he sighs, fiddling with a frayed hem for half a city block before answering as if betraying a confidence even to admit, “He’s doing better.”

“Well, he’s not dead. That’s certainly an improvement.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“And you’re not answering my question.”

“He can’t remember anything from the past year, is that what you wanted to hear?”

Sam stumbles to a halt mid-step, catching herself on railing. “What?” She can’t have possibly heard that correctly. It’s been days since John rose from the dead. He’s talked to dozens of people, including his entire medical staff and the Third Expedition’s physiologist, Alison Porter. No one, least of all Sam herself, had suspected he was missing anything other than the powers he never should have had. Hell, this entire mission to Erecura had been undertaken in the belief that John had remembered something vital from his time as an Ascended being.

But if John’s missing a year…

“I know, I know,” Rodney says quickly, hands waving in double time. “’Lantis has been filling him in on the details, so that’s how he’s been able to hide it from us for as long as he has, but he barely remembers anything after Elizabeth died.”

She doesn’t intend to be as disparaging as she sounds when she asks, “Then where’s this _let’s go to a volcanic moon_ impulse coming from?”

“Don’t ask me. Personally, I’m hoping John was smart enough to realize that there were things we needed to know that he wouldn’t be able to remember after he Descended and so left mental post-its for himself. It’s a bit of a stretch, I know, given the number of times he died last month, but I hold out hope.”

“This isn’t good, Rodney.”

“You’re telling me? I’m the one he doesn’t remember getting married to.”

“What if there’s nothing there?”

“The outpost is there,” he insists, coming to a halt beside the ring transport platform they had to have cannibalized from some uninhabited planet, as the SGC had done for the 304s, though it seems impossible for them to have recovered the number of rings needed to make a twenty-two kilometre long battleship practical in as short a time period as they did. “Or, at least, it was – the Ancient database agrees on that much. I don’t care how geologically active the moon is, something has to have survived the last ten thousand years.”

“But what if it’s not what he thought it would be?

“John’s a big boy. He’ll get over it.”

“He’s not stable.”

“Is anybody?”

“Rodney.”  

“He’s not hurting himself. He’s not hurting anyone else. I think that’s about all we can ask for right now.”

* * *

The thing is, anyone who’s spent five minutes with John knows that what he needs to be doing is spending some quality time in a nice padded room, not piloting one of the most advanced warships in the universe halfway across the system on the off chance that ten thousand years of volcanic eruptions haven’t destroyed whatever  _puzzle piece_ he thinks might be there.

Because as good an act as John has been putting on, no one believes he’s firing on all cylinders at the moment – not even Rodney, who’s so keen to have his husband back that he seems willing to overlook nearly all the signs screaming out that John’s not fine, that John’s not okay, that he’ll never truly be okay ever again.

Because there are some things that people just don’t bounce back from.

* * *

* * *

 

“Have you always wanted to be a pilot?” Doctor Porter asks, her boundless enthusiasm unflagging even after twelve hours in flight.  

Iohannes is tempted to ignore her, as he has for the last eleven hours. If he’d had his way, the psychologist would not be part of this mission at all, but Sam had made her presence a condition for borrowing the Expedition’s geologists to check out Erecura. As much as he would rather pretend the entire field of psychology does not exist, he and Rodney had agreed that there was no point in investigating a geothermal energy research station without geologists in case the moon itself had something to do with the puzzle piece that should be there.

But Iohannes is far from patient at the best of times and the final hour of a twelve-hour journey is not the best of times by anyone’s measure. He shares a look of exasperation with Major Teldy – Sam’s other condition, who’s flipping through a Regency romance over at the weapons console – before giving in and saying, “I think people who don't want to fly are crazy.”

The grin Porter gives him manages to come across as innocent rather than exploitive, although that’s almost certainly what it is. “I don’t know much about it, but you seem to be very good. Actually, people tell me you’re one of the best they’ve ever seen. I suppose you’d have to be to manage a ship this size. Did it take a lot of training?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“Flying comes naturally to _pastores_.”

“And you’ve been a pastor since you were five years old.”

“Someone’s been reading my file,” Iohannes snorts, turning his attention back to the forward viewscreen.

Like the _linter_ ’s exterior, _Vindicta_ ’s bridge has a vaguely delphine shape, with a squat, narrow protrusion just large enough for two consoles jutting out from the gentle curve towards the bow that began twenty kilometres back. Three huge viewscreens follow this curve, rising from the deck plating and arching inward to meet each other at the centre of the overhead, allowing for a full view of the emptiness around them. Though they can function as typical display screens – magnifying objects and presenting heads-up displays, - they typically act as windows, turning _Vindicta_ ’s bridge into one large observation deck.

Two sets of doors punctuate the stern wall, neatly dividing the master display panels into _operations, life support,_ and _engineering_ sections. Along the curving bow are four oversized consoles, running _tactical, navigation, flight control,_ and _communications_ from port to starboard, with the middle two tucked into the dolphin’s _nose_ while weapons and comms hang a further back, a little farther off to the side. A captain’s chair sits in the centre of it all, still wrapped in plastic sheeting for want of enough officers to command the fleet.

The bridge is kept dark most of the time. What light there is usually takes on the deep, relaxing glow of display panels and computer controls operating under standard conditions, but with Arimanius getting awfully big in the window, everything has taken on an unhealthy umber glow, turning the controls beneath his fingers a moulted brown.

His fingers themselves are hideous – sick and sepia-toned, like an early Terran photograph or something fished out of a fetid pond – and Iohannes can scarcely bear to look at them. He has seen enough corpses in his life. He doesn’t need to imagine himself as one, not when he can imagine the cells in his newly formed body dying one by one. He is a child of the stars. Slowly, to the stars he will return.

Arimanius doesn’t hold his interest for long.

Porter gives him that smile again, all cheekbones and pursed lips, the one that should worry him more than it does. No one would ever call her beautiful, but there’s a certain prettiness about her that cannot be denied, especially when she smiles. Joy lights up her entire face; he can easily see some young man or woman devoting their life to trying to make her laugh for that reason alone.

It’s quite likely he’d like Alison Porter if she’d chosen a different profession. She has the same bright, indefatigable nature Teyla does, albeit lacking the refinement age and experience will bring. Her quiet humour is enough to keep what sessions he’s been unable to avoid from being unbearable, but she’s is still a psychologist. She still asks questions Iohannes would rather not think about, let alone discuss with anyone, and refuses to allow him to leave until he’s answered to her satisfaction.

He tries to avoid as many sessions as he can.

“It’s my responsibility to learn everything I can about my patients,” she says, as if she knows what track his thoughts have taken and cannot help but be amused.

“Nobody can learn anything about a person from a file.”

“Well,” she admits, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards, “it’s far from ideal, I’ll give you that, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Is this the part where you tell me off for dodging our appointments?”

This time, her smile reaches her eyes. “It’s like you can read my mind.”

“Hardly.”

“I had wondered. Colonel Carter had mentioned that telepathy was an ability some of Ascended beings have. Now, I know you’re not Ascended anymore, but you’re still fairly close to it – Doctor Beckett told me that, if you weren’t as close to it as you are, they probably would have lost you on the operating table right after you Descended, – so I wondered if you still had any of the abilities. It certainly would explain some things.”

“Had.”

“Had?”

“There are no more Ascended beings. There is no more Ascension.”

“How is that even possible?”

“I suffer from an overdeveloped sense of vengeance,” he says lightly, even as his knuckles go white on flight controls. In the Jovian’s light they appear wan and sallow, and he has to swallow to keep from being ill. He has seen a thousand corpses, but lately even the thought of one is almost more than he can bear.

Maybe mortality isn’t all that he remembered.

Or maybe he’s just getting old.

Porter laughs. It’s even better than her smile. “I don’t think that.”

“Oh?”

“A man with vengeance issues? He would have taken out the Wraith first chance he got, regardless of what the Others threatened to do to everybody else. No, I think what you have is an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.”

“Well what d’you know,” Iohannes says even more lightly still. “Psychology _is_ good for something after all.” Then, without waiting for a response, he reaches across the console and switches over to internal communications and announces to the _linter_ at large, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We will be entering Molniya orbit of the volcanic moon of Erecura in fifteen minutes. If you want to adjust your watch, it is currently 40:36 at the research outpost. The weather in its vicinity is a Level Three hazard warning for both toxic agents and extreme cold, but inside it is a balmy 22.3 degrees Celsius. We wish you a pleasant stay on Erecura and hope to see you again very soon. On behalf of the crew, thank you for choosing the Lantean Argosy for all your space travel needs.”

Porter gives him a knowing look as he switches off the Tannoy, but luckily says nothing. What, in fact, is there to say that hasn’t already been said?


	19. Gubernator, Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ) The Ancient is, "Hello? Is anyone there? It’s all right. You can come out, sweetheart." 2) Tuerus means to keep in good repair; my autocorrect kept changing it to uterus, so if there are any of those in the doc, It's because I missed one in the proof. 3) Nebrius Fell in 8273 BCE, 2 years before Iohannes' dad, Ianus, was born. 4) Mnemosyne, Melpomene, Alcaeus, and Terpsichore were all part of the Nebrian fleet; Iohannes' paternal grandmother, Beatrix, was heres of Alcaeus when Nebrius Fell. 5) I think I mentioned the Hamaxobii once before, in relation to Ronon's gun. They're the Travellers; we'll see more of them soon.

**2 August, 2007 _–_** **_Vindicta, in orbita Erecurae_ , Pegasus**

 

Colonel Sheppard bounces on the balls of his feet as they wait for the Expedition geologists to secure their oxygen masks. After a several minutes, the speed and intensity seems to require some comment, if only to determine that Sam is not, in fact, seeing things. “I thought Ancients were supposed to be patient.”

John stills, startled. “Where did you get that idea?”

Sam shrugs.

It had seemed fairly self-evident from what she’d seen in the Milky Way – from the ruins of their cities, abandoned during the event John calls the Minor Diaspora but has never really elaborated on; from the fragments of their texts that survive, of which those that are not technical manuals or research notebooks tend to read like Eastern philosophies; from the few Ascended Ancients she’d met, who preached tolerance, restraint, and nonviolence with the intensity of the converted – but John _is_ the Ancient. Granted, a highly singular Ancient by anyone’s measure, but an Ancient nonetheless. He would know his species; far better than Daniel, who has the tendency to think the best of people even after he has reason to believe otherwise.

“I don’t know,” she says helplessly. “Oma Desala?”

“Oma was a special little snowflake, even by Alteran standards,” John tells her, batting aside her scant evidence without quite appearing to realize what he’s saying. He’s given no indication that he’d known Oma Desala in his previous life, although that means very little where John is concerned. There are whole great and glorious Ancient histories that the Tau’ri know nothing about, simply because John has never thought to mention them.

“Merlin then?” she presses, because if John is remembering things from the year that Rodney claims he has forgotten, she’s not going to call him on it until she can get as much information about this fool’s errand as possible.

He snorts, momentarily fogging his mask. “Moros Lal is a piss poor example of anything other than psychopathy – or maybe sociopathy. I always get those two confused. Either way, he was nuts. And not in the _mostly harmless_ way I am.”

Sam frowns. “Are we talking about the same Merlin here? Because the guy I met was a bit on the absentminded professor side, I’ll give you that, but I wouldn’t have called him psychotic by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Maybe he changed after he got to Terra,” John shrugs.

“But you doubt it.” It’s not a question

“Nobody changes that much.”

“You did,” she doesn’t say. It seems too cruel. Instead, Sam offers what appears to be the Ancient remedy for all ills, “ _If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago_.”

John’s laugh is muffled by his oxygen mask. “I think the one you’re looking for is: _Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day._ ”

“I’ve not heard that one before.”

“It’s _Winnie the Pooh_ ,” he informs her before adding somewhat defensively, “What? I have a niece.”

“Jake’s more of a _Thomas the Tank Engine_ fan.”

John nods solemnly, though she doubts he’s as cognizant of Tau’ri children’s programming as he’s letting on. Then, almost chagrined, he adds, “I’m sorry.”

This startles her. “For what?”

“You shouldn’t have had to do this. We should have been able to figure it out for ourselves. You’ve fought your wars. You should get to have your peace.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I know you don’t. But none of us are young anymore and saving the universe is a young man’s game.”

“Is that what you think we’re doing here? Saving the universe?”

John only shrugs, staring off into the distance as if the answers were writ upon whatever shadows he watches.

Sam follows his gaze but sees nothing. When she looks back, he’s gone.

* * *

* * *

 

**Nebrian Outpost, Erecura, Pegasus**

 

The proximity alarm sounds thin and pale in the silence – a stale, muted protest against the raging chaos that surrounds and threatens the research station.

John quiets it with a wave of his hand, an echo of the _cease and desist_ command reverberates through the twin devices installed in the mastoid skin behind Rodney’s right ear and between his C2 and C3 vertebrae. It’s a raw sound, rough and untamed, and out of instinct he raises a hand, remembering all too well the burst and bleeding eardrums from Rory’s earliest days.

His hand comes away clean, stopped by the oxygen mask and common sense. Rory is sentient, this outpost is not, and this knowledge is enough to redirect the devices in his brain stem towards the internal sensor array. “It’s like we picked up from orbit,” Rodney says, shifting through the corrupted data. “The atmosphere inside is thin, but oxygen levels are already starting to rise, which makes more intact systems than the last outpost we visited. We should be able to take off these masks in a couple hours if I can repair whatever damage the who’s who of corrosive chemicals outside has done to the environmental systems, which is far from certain.

“We can go ahead and ring down the geologists if you think we can trust them to keep their masks on. The sooner they get down here, the sooner we can get out of here and the less likely we are to be caught up in a volcanic eruption, to say nothing of earthquakes and let’s not forget the storm of corrosive chemicals outside. Next time you want to play hide-and-seek with the universe, try to put your _puzzle pieces_ on a more hospitable planet, would you? Some place with people, maybe?”

“I don’t know, Sir,” Major Teldy says, shining her gunlight into all the dark corners of the hallway they now find themselves in. “I’m personally enjoying the lack of hostile natives.” She, John, and Rodney himself were the only three to ring down with this group, ostensibly to determine if there’s anything left to salvage in the research station – a task to which Major Teldy is uniquely unsuited, considering the predictable lack of hostiles. But she’s good company for a Marine and unlikely to shoot either of them unless truly provoked, even if those are likely the orders Sam gave.

“There aren’t too many of those in Pegasus since the Confederation Charter.”

“I consider the Genii a hostile race, Sir.”

Rodney snorts. “I agree with you there, but it’s John you have to convince. He _likes_ Ladon Radhim for some reason.”

“Really? Why’s that, Sir?”

John doesn’t answer, nor give any indication he’s so much as heard the question. A quick diagnostic of the comm units assures him that the problem isn’t one of transmission, but that only serves to fuel the fear beginning to churn in Rodney’s gut. He’s already lost John half-a-hundred times already (or so it seems). He can’t lose him again now, he just _can’t_.

“Commander Sheppard?” Teldy repeats. The nose of her gun, which had dipped during their conversation, rises again to train on the back of John’s oversized USAF sweatshirt.

Against all common sense, Rodney walks into her line of fire, holding up a hand in the universal – for humans, at least – signal to _wait just a damn second_. “John?” he asks, moving closer. “Is everything all right?”

John answers him, at least, even if he doesn’t turn around. “Don’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“It’s… Stay where you are,” he says, making a quick stilling motion behind his back even as he takes a handful of steps forward – putting him perilously close, if by chance there _are_ hostiles here – to the intersection of four shadowy corridors. “I think… _Salve? Ibi ecqui est…? Omnis bonus est. Egredi posses, mel.”_

And then Rodney hears it: not the sweeping, symphonic song of a city-ship like Atlantis nor even the sweet, uncultured tunes of a computer come to intelligence in isolation, but a string of seemingly random clicks and beeps that it doesn’t require a _custodia_ to hear. “What the…?”

“It’s _Hafnia-3_ , a really old machine code – older than ‘Lantis old…” He turns back towards the shadows, the translation reverberating through Rodney’s devices, “ _Don’t be afraid. We’re friends. We only want to help_.”

“How do you know that?” Rodney asks in surprise. Even Ascended, John had never seemed interested in how computers work so much that they did and had somehow evolved to give him ‘Lantis and Rory. But then again, he’s never needed to know. They’ve always spoken to him. He’s never needed to coax one into doing what needs with line after line of awkward, imperfect code.

“Better question,” Teldy interrupts, “if it’s so old, what’s it doing here? I thought the Ancients didn’t come to this galaxy until ten thousand years ago.”

“The _Tethys_ -class _lintres_ predated the _urbes-naves_ by a millennium or so. I’m sure their primary code had been undated a dozen times over by the time the last one was destroyed, but some of their less vital systems still used the old stuff – the _tueri_ especially.”

“What’s a _tuerus_?“

“Repair units – you’ll see. _You’ve been here a long time haven’t you? It’s awful, I know. We’re here to take you home_.”

At the word _home_ a small figure comes darting out of the shadows, humming sadly as it hovers ankle-height off the floor. It resembles nothing so much as a deflated football – the American kind – or a tissue box that’s bowed out at the sides, and is about the same size as either. A ring of electric blue and burnt orange lights cut through its dull, dusty casing about a third of the way from the top flickering wildly, without any sort of readily discernable pattern. Two camera lenses of unequal size jut out from its casing, placed at one-hundred eighty degrees from each other. The larger focuses on John with inhuman intensity, continuing to _clack_ and _clatter_ like the outpost is coming down around them.

“ _Hey buddy_ ,” John says, kneeling down and holding out a hand, “ _how did you wind up here all alone?_ ”

The robot _clicks_ and _clatters_ , suggestions of meaning cluttering the back of Rodney’s mind, before darting into John’s arms.

John pats its case gently. _“I know, buddy. I know, but it really does get better from here.”_

* * *

* * *

 

**7 August, 2007**

 

They find five of them before the end: four _tueri_ – small repair robots that had been left behind by _Mnemosyne_ on that _linter_ ’s last stopover to handle minor repairs while their engineer was back on Nebrius – and a larger _curator_ unit from _Melpomene_ , all with the associated personality quirks that one would expect from _intelligentiae tacitae_ that have been around for a couple million years. The last ten thousand, spent mostly on their own, has actually appeared to smooth out the worst of their idiosyncrasies, if the ones he’d known on _Tethys_ were any standard.

“I actually knew one,” he says on their one night at the outpost after five unsuccessful days of searching for anything that might have compelled his Ascended self to send them halfway across the system. Everyone is gathered around the large trestle table in what passed for the mess hall for the original researchers, poking unenthusiastically at their MREs, “on _Tethys_ that went full-on Rambo.”

“No!” Sam laughs, a bright sound despite the shadows under her eyes. “I mean, how? They can’t have been programed for that sort of thing at all.”

“You never know. A lot of them had been around since the first _Tethys_ -class _lintres_ were built during the Second Wave, shortly after my people arrived in Avalon. Some of my ancestors managed to turn paranoia into an art form before the end.”

Rodney snorts at this. “ _Some_ of your ancestors? Your _father_ made paranoia seem like a serious breach of good judgement. I’ve been working on decrypting his notes for _years_ now and’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s there.”

Iohannes opens his mouth, but Major Teldy beats him to the punch, saying, “Bully for the Colonel’s ancestors,” before gesturing at him with her plastic fork, “I want to hear more about this Rambo-bot.”

“It didn’t start out as a Rambo-bot.”

“Of course not,” Rodney mutters. “That was your influence, wasn’t it?”

“No, actually.”

“No?”

“No. I was just as surprised as anybody when the Wraith boarded the _linter_ and this little _tuerus_ comes flying out of the vents, guns blazing. Never seen anything like it – and neither had the Wraith. It probably saved my life.”

This startles a laugh out of the Major, a sound that goes a long way to reminding him that, for all the service she’s seen, she’s still _young_. She doesn’t know what loss – real loss – is. None of the Terrans do. Iohannes shouldn’t begrudge them that, but it makes things hard sometimes. More then their species, it is their differing backgrounds that cause the most problems.

Major Teldy cannot be more than thirty. She may have fought in wars, she may have seen her comrades die in droves around her, but she doesn’t know what it is to be the member of a dying race – to know that every one who falls is a cousin, sharing the same small, salvaged set of genes that is all that remains of one’s species. By the time he was her age, he’d spent over two decades trying to save a race that didn’t want to be saved – that had accepted its own end and revelled in it, believing that their passivity was moral superiority – that Ascension was anything more than an escape.

At thirty, he had been _custodia_ , _pastor_. He’d earned four of his eventual five _laudes counselium_ and risen to the rank of _tribunus_. He’d fought in two major battles and uncountable nameless skirmishes. He’d piloted _Tethys_ to her doom and Tirianius to her death, drowned in an ocean and all but died in a desert. He’d lost so many that only Atlantis knows the official count.

Suddenly, almost desperately, he needs the Terrans to know, to understand. His life until the First Expedition found him had been so empty, filled with little more than blood and the vague hope that all this would one day just _end_. If they continue down this road they’re on, their species could end up the same way – fighting the Wraith, fighting the Lucian Alliance, fighting some race as yet unknown. They have to learn. They have to survive. He can’t watch another species destroy itself – not when he can stop it, not when he can save them.

"At the time,” Iohannes begins, explaining as he goes, “we had an alliance of sorts with the Hamaxobii – a group of Descendants who had recently abandoned their homeworlds because of the Wraith. They transferred their entire population to a fleet of primitive _lintres_ , much as my people had done after the Fall of Loegria – the original Loegria. They had tracked a series of hives ships and their escorts entering a region of space known as the Palamede but hadn't seen them leave. We all wanted to know if they were massing or, more likely, been destroyed in the crossing.

"The Palamede is perilous. You've got neutron stars and supergiants and even a miniature white hole all in this space about 5 light years across in any direction. Sensors don’t work there. Gravitational shear will destroy a _linter_ as soon as hide it. There’s only one planet in the area, this barely habitable thing trapped in a quaternary system that no one sets foot on if they have any choice about it.

“Anyway,” Iohannes says quickly, staring down at his hands and remembering the rivers of blood that have stained them. He tucks them into the sleeves of his borrowed sweatshirt before continuing, “it was a trap. We were ambushed. We tried to outrun them, until the engines failed – though broke away might be the better word. The Wraith boarded what was left. A dozen of them beamed directly onto the bridge and took those of us still alive prisoner. That was when the _tuerus_ it wanted revenge for what they’d done…

“It distracted the Wraith so I was able to get away. The others… most of the others weren’t so lucky.” Iohannes glances up then, startled by the number of eyes on him. Their stares make him feel uncomfortable, as if they expect him to go mad at any moment – as if they expect him to re-declare for _Haeresis_ and demand their utter obedience or complete obliteration. It’s all he can do to stay in place under their stares; he’s less successful disguising the full-body shudder this thought brings. “What?”

Up until this point Rodney had been the only one not starting at him. He looks Iohannes’ way now, glancing at him only long enough to roll his eyes at him before pointedly returning to his earlier study of the remnants of the MREs. “You just said more about your past just now that you’ve said in the last three years.”

He has to struggle to keep his voice steady, only managing it by keeping all his attention on the _tuerus_ that appears at his elbow as if summoned. Stroking its worn metallic casing, he says, “It’s not my history, not really. A lot of people were lost that day that I couldn’t have. It’s their history, not mine.”

“Shouldn’t you tell it then?” Doctor Porter asks. He’d almost managed to forget that she was there – that she must be having a field day with this – but it’s too late to back out now. Besides, she may actually have point. “If you’re the only one left to tell the story, shouldn’t you make sure it doesn’t die with you?”

“You say that like I paid attention to the stories. There’s a lot I don’t know – a lot that I don't remember and even more I never bothered to learn. I mean, I can tell you about the seven waves of colonization or the stuff I lived through myself, but some stuff nobody ever knew.” Iohannes gestures at the _tuerus_ still at his elbow. “Take Nebrius. She Fell in the thirty-second year of the war, but nobody knows what really happened. The only survivors were from _Alcaeus_ , which wasn’t with the rest of the fleet when it was destroyed.”

The _tuerus_ bumps against his arm sadly. _Mnemosyne_ , which had been its home for millennia before being left behind here, had been part of the Nebrian fleet.

“I know, buddy. But I’ll be taking you and your friends back to Atlantis soon, I promise.”

It bumps his arm again, trilling excitedly. Iohannes expects it to stop there – all of the _tuerui_ have expressed excitement about leaving the outpost – but it continues, adding a few beeps and whistles to the mix before brushing past him to land on the table.

“Hey now, what did I say? No bots on the furniture,” Iohannes tells it, going to lift it off-

Then its ring of lights turns completely orange and it’s holographic projector _hums_ to life, creating a flickering image of a young woman with dark hair and streaks of oil across her face and Guardsman’s uniform.

 _“Auriel, we’ve just received word that Nebrius has Fallen – which you would know if you were wearing your radio. Father’s just sent word from_ Terpsichore _that some of the fleet survived the battle and are regrouping in the Palamede. The_ Praetor _must be planning a counterattack… They’re sending a transport for us. It should be here by morning…”_

The hologram cuts out. There’s a moment of silence and then the room fills with noise.


	20. Gubernator, Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: This ended up being a lot more talking than I intended, but... what can you do? 
> 
> 1) The meds mentioned are real drugs. Lithium is a mood stablizier. Xomolix is a typical antipsycotic. Dalcipran is an SNRI antidepressant. While I've never been on any of these myself, my sister has, and so I've so experience with the RL side effects of these kinds of meds. 2) If your doctor assigns you meds, it's probably for a reason and you should probably take them. **Do not follow John's lead.**

**7 August, 2007 _–_** **Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

“So let me get this straight,” Evan says, managing to sound exhausted despite the early hour, “Icarus thinks that you’ve found the location of a hidden Ancient fleet.”

“Yes.”

“Just how big a fleet are we talking about here, pops?”

“John says there were twenty-three ships in the Nebrian fleet before the city was destroyed. Depending on how many survived that battle, we could be looking at as many as twenty of those or as few as two or three. Odds are that it’s not more than five or six, though – more than that and they wouldn’t have retreated; less and they wouldn’t have planned to counterattack.”

“Still, even five or six _lintres_ would double the size of the Argosy. _If_ those ships are still there.”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Sam says, leaning forward to put both of her elbows on the desk in front of her. _Vindicta_ had docked late last night, but the short rotation of Nova Loegria combined with the thunderstorm still raging and the excitement from the discovery on Erecura had made for a restless sleep.

She’s been on Atlantis for a few weeks now, but she still can’t get used to the idea of recovering an Ancient fleet without Daniel nearby, chattering on about the historical importance of their discovery, or Vala attempting to determine which bobble would sell for highest on the black market, or Cam trying so hard to fill Jack’s shoes that she wants to take him aside and explain that he doesn’t have to be Jack, that no one expects him to be Jack, so long as he does his job. She still thinks of SG-1 as _her_ team. Her dreams are filled with a thousand fears, one for each and every way she’s letting them down by being here, on Atlantis, instead of there, with them.

But she _needs_ to be here. She was the only one the Émigrés would have accepted to lead the Third Expedition after the disaster that was Colonel Telford. More than that, though, it _was_ time to move on. There wasn’t much more she could have done at the SGC unless General Landry retired, but even then they’d never have let an O-6 have that command. Her choices had either been Atlantis or Area 51 and, honestly, she wasn’t quite ready to stop going through the Stargate yet. Even if it meant leaving behind her family and her team to come to a sentient city in a distant galaxy controlled by aliens and alien-sympathizers with priorities so different from her own that it’s sometimes a shock to remember that Evan, who is now _imperator_ of Pegasus, was once the young, guileless, second-in-command of SG-11 she remembers from P3X-403.

He looks the part too. He’s taken to dressing like John used to, in clothes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in The War of the Roses. Today’s selection is a dusky purple that brings out the shadows under his eyes – a realization which sends a stab of guilt into Sam’s heart. She’s supposed to be running the day-to-day operations of the city, not gallivanting across the galaxy, exploring abandoned outposts.

Maybe John’s right. Maybe saving the universe – or whatever it is they’re doing – is better left to the young.

(But if any of them really believed that, they wouldn’t be here.)

“According to John, the place where they’re supposed to be hidden is something like the Bermuda Triangle of the Pegasus galaxy. I looked it up on the flight back in the _Vindicta_ ’s copy of the Ancient database. It’s a minefield of class Ia supergiants and neutron stars, with the occasional G-type and brown dwarf thrown in for good measure. Even _if_ the Nebrians decided to abandon what was left of their fleet there, which I doubt, it would be almost impossible to find an orbit that would be stable for ten thousand years in that kind of environment.”

“So any ships that might’ve been there might have crashed into whatever star they were around,” Evan sighs, as if he’d been waiting for the inevitable catch. (She feels ridiculous for thinking how much he’s grown since P3X-403, but there it is. She can’t imagine the Major she’d met years ago being so wary, but, then again, she can’t imagine that man ever leaving the Air Force either.)

Rodney nods, running his hands through his hair nervously as he adds, “Or into each other, which is more likely, but if anyone could do it, the Ancients could.”

“Can we even get there, though? If it’s the minefield you say, can one of our ships even get to them – or get them out?”

“John can do it. He’s been there before.”

“John’s _lost_ a ship there before,” Sam corrects, feeling bad for doing so. But John’s _Tethys_ had been lost, with only twenty-three of the original four hundred hands surviving. Her attempts to learn more had been blocked by every terminal she’s tried it on, the Ancient database proclaiming that she doesn’t have a high enough security clearance to know just how John managed to escape his ship and return to Atlantis.

“Extenuating circumstances.”

Sam will give him that, at least.

Evan shakes his head, pausing when a thought appears to strike him. “Where _is_ Icarus anyway?”

Rodney glances at the rain lashing the widows for a long moment before answering reluctantly, “He has good days and bad days…” He trails off, glancing back at the storm. “We were lucky to get as many good days as we did.”

“You mean…?”

“No, no, nothing like before. He’s sane, or sane enough, but the drugs Doctor Porter has him on are pretty strong. He’s in no condition to be going anywhere for a few while.”

“There’s no hurry. Those ships have been there for ten thousand years. I’m sure a few more days wouldn’t hurt,” Sam reminds them both, knowing that she needs to be the realistic one here. Evan has swallowed the dream of the Pegasus Confederation whole and Rodney… well, there will never be a day when Rodney doesn’t believe in John, no matter what he does, no matter what lines he crosses.

“Unless…”

“Unless Icarus remembered about Erecura when he did for a reason,” Evan finishes with another sigh. “I’m going to go talk to him.”

Rodney pushes away from the table. “I’ll come with you. He’s… He’s not entirely himself right now.”

Sam doesn’t ask to go with them, only allows her chin to rest on her palms. She knows they’d refuse. Friends they may be, the new Lanteans are still wary of her – and protective of their former emperor. They make for a strange family, but she’s seen stranger.

She is still _part_ of stranger, even if the rest of them are three million light-years away.

A boy, not much older than ten, bounds up to her office door. Sam knows enough about Pegasus culture to pin this boy as one of Jinto’s cadre of merchant’s sons and tradesmen’s daughters, who serve as messengers and runners for the Émigrés until they’re old enough to be apprenticed as technicians or hydroponics specialists or students in Atlantis’ fledgling university. This one appears vaguely Polynesian, his pale grey eyes standing out starkly against his dark skin, and wears a beadwork belt across his otherwise Athosian clothing that must be a relic of his original homeworld. His smile is more gaps than teeth, but he’s utterly formal when he announces, “Colonel Carter: incoming wormhole. Lady Teyla wants permission to bring guests through.”

“Tell her to go ahead – and tell the security teams to stand-by.”

The boy salutes raggedly before running off.

Sam still doesn’t’ know what quite to make of Atlantis, but one thing’s sure: it’s not the SGC.

* * *

* * *

 

He's always tired these days. It's understandable after a mission, particularly one bookended by twelve-hour trans-system flights, but less so otherwise. He's always tired. He's always lethargic. He's always nauseated. He's always one bad day away from being placed back in isolation _for his own protection_ , with more tubes running out of his arms than some of the cybernetic monsters that fill the Terrans' silver screen.

He knows it's the drugs. The Expedition doctors have him taking seventeen pills on any given day, most of them supplements to make up for the damage he'd done himself Descending haphazardly, but there're are others: lithium, to keep him from becoming manic; Dalcipran, to keep him from killing himself; Xomolix, to keep the ghosts of millennia past at bay. Iohannes submits to these last because the doctors insist, not because he sees any real need for them. Depression and mania are largely Terran constructs to him. The ghosts of his Ascendancy are beyond his recall.

Dysphoria he can handle; so too the nausea and anxiety and lethargy. But the near-perpetual vertigo is where he draws the line. Vertigo is impossible to disguise – and, worse still, means he cannot fly. Had Erecura been halfway across the galaxy instead of just across the system, he’d have been unable to pilot _Vindicta_ at all.

He clutches the bathroom sink, fighting back a wave of dizziness.

He can’t go on like this.

* * *

* * *

 

**8 August, 2007**

 

Although the worst of the storm has long passed, irrational squalls of rain still plague the city, causing Rodney to regard the strip of clear sky beyond the open hangar door with distrust. A little rain won’t harm _Aurora_ , but lightning is another story altogether. Lightning can garble even the most sophisticated sensors and trigger problematic emergency systems, which is why even now most aerospace engineers recommend _not_ launching during a storm like this.

“Storm’s letting up.”

He turns to look at Evan, who’s walking down the gangplank in fresh clothes, hair still wet, carrying a gym bag. “You know there are about five thousand empty rooms in the city, right? You don’t have to keep living aboard ship.”

Evan shrugs. “Rory’s a good roommate.”

Rodney decides he doesn’t want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. Luckily he doesn’t have to, as Evan continues-

“You’ll take good care of her, right?”

“Of course I will. What kind of question is that?”

“I mean it, pops. Take care of her.”

“And I’m offended you even felt the need to ask. I might not be as close to Rory as you are, but I’m still a _pastor_. She still means something to me, even if she doesn’t have me convinced she’s John’s long lost _Palantis_ -class daughter like she has the rest of you. And besides, do you honestly think there’s any chance of me going anywhere on _any_ spaceship that I’ve not checked twice over from bow to stern?”

Evan has the grace to look abashed. “Yeah. Sorry. I’ve just not gotten used to the idea of you guys taking Rory anywhere without me.”

“Yes, well, John’s been piloting since before anyone on our planet had so much as come up with the idea of the written word, let alone that it might take something more than wax and chicken feathers to get off the ground, so I think she’s in safe hands. Besides, we need you on Atlantis, doing all the Imperial things that keep us in the copper wire and titanium-yttrium alloy I need to take care of this demented spaceship.

“Calling Rory _demented_ doesn’t exactly fill me with encouragement.”

“Well, if she stops calling me her _evil stepfather_ , I’ll stop calling her _demented_.”

“Pick the battles you can win, pops. Though speaking of fathers-”

“John’s fine,” Rodney insists rather more harshly than he’d intended. As much as he loves John, he’s getting tired of having to defend him at every turn – and as much as he would love to say that isn’t his fault, it is, because _John_ ’s the one who went Ori, _John_ ’s the one who tried to kill himself; _John_ ’s the one doing the tightrope act between genius and insanity.

Evan readjusts the bag’s strap. “Are you sure, ‘cause when I talked to Icarus yesterday, he seemed…”

“As high as a kite?” Rodney offers.

“I was going to go with _not entirely himself_ ,” his adopted son says honestly, “but that works too. You know what he said? Yesterday, I mean, when I went to talk to him?”

“Nothing sensible, I’m sure.”

“He told me he held time in his hands and watched it slip away until he had dissevered the equations that could predict the future – those were his exact words, _dissevered the equations_. Couldn’t remember them, of course, but said things should end well for all of us if he’d crunched the numbers right. _If_.”

“Well, he _does_ have a Fields Medal. Odds are he didn’t make too many rounding errors.”

“Pops.”

Rodney, agitated, throws his hands into the air. “What do you want me to say? That my husband – the idiot who adopted you – has gone completely around the bend? Maybe he has, but truth is we don’t know. Maybe he _was_ around at the beginning of the universe. Maybe he started it all off or maybe he was just along for the ride – I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll ever really know. But what I _do_ know is that somewhere, deep inside, John’s still John, and we’ll never get anywhere with him if we try to lock him up and throw away the key. Best to just treat him as we always have and keep an eye out in case things start to go wrong.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Evan says quickly, holding his hands up in mock surrender, “I’m just saying maybe, after this is over, try to get him to take some more downtime between missions. Ease him back into it.”

“This is Pegasus.”

Wryly, “Well, try anyway.” Evan starts to walk away, only looking back after he’s taken a handful of steps towards the nearest ring transport. “Oh, and another thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Icarus told me I could stay in your guys’ spare room if I promised to look after the repair ‘bots you picked up Erecura.”

“So?”

“So are they supposed to be pets or did you guys go a little crazy at the adoption agency?”

That… is not actually a question Rodney knows the answer to. For his own sanity, he says, “Pets. Let’s go with anything smaller than Rory being a pet.”

“Easier to clean up after then after a dog, I guess.”

“You haven’t seen the oil stains yet.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“As well you should. Now go. Get out of here. Stick around any longer and they’ll start sending out search parties. Then we’ll all be roped into whatever insanity you’re supposed to be dealing with today.”

Evan wrinkles his nose at the reminder. “It’s supposed to be confederation talks with that group Teyla brought in from Cyzicos all morning then trade talks with the new Daganian Minister for Enterprise and Innovation all afternoon. Don’t ask,” he adds quickly, when he sees Rodney about to ask what the hell Dagan wants now. “Just don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. ‘Cause I don’t know if I could explain it if I tried.”


	21. Gubernator, Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be longer. It was also supposed to be finished ~~weeks~~ months ago. I got distracted and this middle part was a pain to write. Sorry.
> 
> Also, more on the Emigres mentioned [here.](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/280334.html)

**9 August, 2007 _–_** **_Aurora_ , The Palamede, Pegasus**

 

They drop out of hyperspace in the orbit of a blue supergiant, in the middle of a debris field that stretches for miles beyond measure in every direction.

Iohannes curses, slamming the engines into reverse faster than the inertial dampeners can fully compensate. He’s thrown forward, head slamming into the flight controls while his ribs, still not completely healed after his recent adventures in Ascension, become intimately acquainted with the hard edge of his console. Bile tinged with blood rises in his throat and every inch of him feels bruised, if not broken, but Iohannes pushes himself back into his chair and starts manoeuvring _Aurora_ as best as he can through the minefield of asteroid-sized wreckage.

“Rory,” he shouts over the chaos of warning signals and master alarms behind him, “set shields to maximum. Divert power from whatever you have to. There’s no way we’re gonna make it out here without scratching the paint a little. Any chance you can plot us a course out of here?”

//In this radiation? // she asks, trying to keep the panic from her voice and failing horribly, //We can give you one hundred kilometres, that’s all.//

“That’s better than nothing. Do what you can. Choke the engines. Open all the flaps. Vent atmosphere if you have to. I’ll use docking thrusters alone if that’s what it takes to get us out of this in one piece.”

//We may be able to open a hyperspace window.//

Iohannes actually laughs, he’s thinks it’s that much of a joke. “In The Palamede? Y’know, I’d prefer it if you’d told me about these suicidal tendencies before we left Atlantis.”

//We’re sorry, but do you have a better idea?//

“Now is not the time to be getting tetchy, _carissima_ ,” bringing the _linter_ into a sharp climb up and over a chunk of wreckage almost half Rory’s size.

It’s hard to tell if the metallic groan that follows is Rory getting pissy with him or parts of the debris scrapping her undercarriage. //Opening hyperspace window in five-//

“Rory-“

//Four-//

“Don’t be an idiot-“

//Three-//

“Shit-“

//Two-//

“Shit-“

//One. Board is green. Prepare for hyperspace jump.//

There is no escaping a hyperspace window, not when it opens only metres off the port bow. It’s all he can do to manoeuvre _Aurora_ into an angle that won’t tear her apart on entry and ride out the storm.

Ten seconds of turbulence turns into twenty seconds of havoc becomes thirty seconds of buckling haul plating and tempestuous sheers. The power drains from the shields faster than Rory can steal it from weapons, from communications, from sensors. Emergency systems – those few that hadn’t already been on – trigger in cascades, until the bridge is filled with fire suppressant fog and the minimum amount of oxygen required to sustain three people for half-an-hour.

And then it’s over. Through the flickering lights and curtains of smoke Iohannes can make out a clear field beyond the viewscreen, the blue supergiant still visible in the distance but reduced to the size of his clenched fist.

“Is this what you do with ‘Helianus?” Iohannes snaps once he has forced air into his lungs. “No, wait, it doesn’t matter: you’re both grounded. Forever.”

// _Pater_ -//

“No. Just- Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? I can get you out of a debris cloud but I can’t piece you back together if you get yourself _shaken apart in a hyperspace envelope._ You understand that right?”

//You cannot save us if you are dead.//

“I’m not-“

//Your ribs are broken and you’re bleeding internally. The bones will pierce your lungs if you try to stand or breathe too deeply. The only one aboard with any sort of medical training is Doctor Porter. You would have died before we made it out of the debris field.//

Iohannes’ breath is coming in sharp, shuddering bursts. There’s a vice in his chest and all he can taste is copper.

//Can you lift your arms?//

If he can lift his hands, he can try to heal himself. If he can reach his ribs, he might be able to stabilize the break or stopper the bleeding long enough to get him back to Atlantis.

His wheeze is answer enough.

Rory’s voice is surprisingly even over the trembling of her song, //Doctor Kununsagi is unconscious. Major Teldy cannot hear us. We need you to get her attention. Can you do that, _Pater_?//

If he can get Anne’s attention, she can help him. She might not be able to get him medical attention in time, but she could lift his arm for him. That might be enough, if he can heal himself. If he still has that ability after Descending so far and burning the Higher Planes behind him.

But he can’t speak.

He can’t speak.

He can’t

* * *

* * *

 

“Was that really necessary?” Rodney snaps, rubbing the back of his head furiously, not bothering to turn around. “We’re supposed to be scientists. Can we at least pretend we’ve evolved past the need to resort to physical violence?”

Radek slaps him again, harder. “You are smartest person in two galaxies. I say this to remind myself you are not, in fact, the biggest idiot the universe has ever seen.”

“As much as it pains me to say so, you’re right for once, because I have _no earthly idea_ what is you’re going on about.”

Radek grabs his shoulders and twists his chair until it’s pointed directly at Doctor Adi Ahavah, almost directly behind his monitoring station. “Look.”

“Okay, first of all,” Rodney says, peeling off Radek’s hands, “I’ve had it up to here with your manhandling. I don’t care what you and Evan get up to in your free time, but you try it on me again and you’ll be on water treatment detail for the rest of your natural life. And, second, _what on earth am I supposed to be looking at_?”

“I take it back. You are not idiot: you are deaf, dumb, and _blind_ idiot. Doctor Ahavah is _sick_. Doctor Cole spent the better part of last week threatening to put her on _bed rest_. She’s had to leave the room _twice_ to be sick since we got aboard.”

“Oh.” Now that Radek mentions it, Adi does look awfully pale, even by her standards.

The sound he hears is Radek rolling his eyes. “Yes, _oh_. Now, tell Doctor Ahavah to go lie down. I have been trying to tell her for an hour to use Evan’s cabin, but she’s afraid of upsetting you. Suicide bombers killed half her family, but is you she’s afraid of!”

“As well she should be,” Rodney snorts, turning back to his diagnostics. Even so, he shouts over his shoulder, “Adi, it’s not my job to know if you’re too sick to work or not. Go lie down or something. We’ll radio you if we need you.”

At least, that’s what he intends to say. He gets as far as _sick_ before he’s thrown backwards, slamming into his chair with greater force than the Apollo astronauts used to experience with the old Saturn V rockets. The seat edge catches the lip of the Device Carson placed between his second and third cervical vertebrae and forces it deeper into his spinal column.

For an instant, Rodney can’t move. Arms, legs, lungs – nothing will cooperate. The world greys out around him as he slowly suffocates on the air that cannot escape his lungs and he cannot call out. But after a terrible stretch of eternity, the moment passes, and he has the chance to gasp for breath.

When the colour returns to the world, he finally notices Radek standing above him. “Rodney?” The right side of his face a Jackson Pollock of sallow puces and tender pinks. “Rodney, are you alright?” One of the lenses of his glasses is missing, with only a few ragged shards still clinging to the frame to suggest they ever were. “Rodney, I need you to tell me if you are hurt.”

“I think he’s in shock,” Doctor Ahavah suggests, her words thick and slurred. Already naturally pale, Adi’s face is chalky white as she hovers overhead with fingers of green creeping in from the edges. “We should lay him on floor. Unless you think is bad idea to move him.”

“ _You_ should lie down, Adi,” Rodney manages to cough, “You look about to keel over.”

She pats him tenderly on the shoulder on her way to the master engineering display panel. “You say the sweetest things,”

Radek just looks at him sternly. “Are you hurt?”

He can’t answer – breath is still to precious and, besides, even if he could put together words, he has no idea what they’d come out as with the Device malfunctioning as is. It’s all he can do to scrabble at the back of his neck, trying to find the catch that will ease the Device from between his C2 and C3 vertebrae.

Radek doesn’t ask if he’s sure. Radek doesn’t ask if it’s safe. Radek, bless his demonic Czech soul, he just rips out the Device. Then, without pausing, he yanks out its helpmate and tosses both to the deck without any care for the delicate machinery. Rory’s voice immediately goes quiet in his mind.

“Thank you,” he coughs.

“I told you that thing would kill you,” Radek says before pulling him into a rough hug.

“I’ll build in an airbag next time.”

“Good. I didn’t want to be saying _I told you so_ at your funeral.”

“Laurel? Hardy?” Adi interrupts uncharacteristically, voice growing sharp at the edges. “Something’s overriding the safeties. The hyperdrive engines are spooling up and three heat sinks are down.”

“We need to get up to the bridge.”

“ _Ne_ , the heat sinks-“

“You fix the heat sinks,” Rodney says frantically, trying to shove his hands into the sleeves of his robes at the same time he’s attempting to find pickets to put his Devices in. He fails, largely because _Aurora_ begins to quake, floundering as the hyperdrive rips open a tear in reality she cannot sustain. She haemorrhages power, trying desperately to maintain her shields, but it’s too little too late and two more heat sinks rupture under the onslaught.

If he could make it to his feet, he could help. He could reroute power – any of them could – but the deck shakes so violently they’ve all be thrown once more to the floor, he and Radek an uncomfortable tangle of limbs and elbows in the gut. It would be impossible to stand, let alone manoeuvre the access ladders they’d need to take into the bowels of the ship. It’s all they can do to lie in heaps and wait for the end.

And then, somehow, it does.

Rodney scrambles to his feet with barely a pause. “We need to get to the bridge,” he repeats.

“Rodney,” Radek groans, standing much more slowly.

“Don’t _Rodney_ me right now. Something’s going wrong up there and _I_ _can’t hear her_ to fix it. I have to get to the bridge. We,” he gestures to Adi,” who’s busy throwing up in the corner, “have to get to the bridge. Now.”

“Adi should be on _bed rest_.”

“ _Adi_ ,” the woman herself says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “is ten weeks pregnant, not made of glass. If I couldn’t do the job I wouldn’t be here.”

Rodney opens his mouth, but for once decides digression is the better part of valour and doesn’t say anything until he’s facing Radek again. “See, she’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”

Radek, perhaps stunned for the first time in his life, says nothing, just waves them on their way.

* * *

 

* * *

He wakes up in a tangle of his own limbs, tasting blood and bile as he coughs. Every inch of him hurts, but somehow he finds the strength to roll onto his back, which at least helps with the coughing. Even so, it takes him a long moment to find the breath to say, “Rory? Can you do something about the alarms?”

The alarms cut out, the _linter_ remaining uncharacteristically silent in response. He settles for patting her deck lightly, which somewhat calms her song.

“You’re grounded,” he reminds her, his thoughts moving like sludge through his mind. Did he hit his head? Iohannes doesn’t remember. Everything’s murky. Everything hurts. “We’ll start with five hundred years.”

The voice that answers is not the one he expects. There’s a hint of the Carolinas in this one and more drawl than can be explained by accent alone. “Sir? Are you alright?”

“You sound like I should be asking you that, Major.”

“I only ask because you’re on fire.”

“Am I?” He blearily opens a single eye. A wild blue flame dances along his skin, charring a few stray threads on his tattered USAFA sweatshirt. “I guess so.” Iohannes considers this for a moment, “There’s not enough oxygen. There’s too much of the other thing.”

“Carbon dioxide?”

“Yeah, that one.” He watches the flame spark and sputter against his skin. It doesn’t hurt – quite the opposite in fact – and seems entirely unaffected by what may or may not be in the air. It makes him very tired. “How’s Miko?”

There’s some delay before Major Teldy answers. “Unconscious. There’s a lot of blood. I think she needs a doctor.”

But they don’t have any doctors aboard, Iohannes remembers, and feels something in his gut _snap_. The pale blue fire that surrounds him pulses outwards, leaping from his skin and lapping at the deck as it rushes like wildfire in every direction. He has just enough time to think _cold_ before it reaches Major Teldy and Doctor Kununsagi.

 _//_ Cold,// he thinks again, projecting his thoughts outwards. //Cold,// and, //They hurt.//


	22. Gubernator, Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This sort of flowed. I'm not sure how well it fits in with the rest, as it sort of diverged from my original intention, but it brings us thru "Travellers" and the Gubernator-arc.   
> 1) The ship names are various characters from Greek/Roman mythology. 2) Descension is hard on anyone. 3) I apolgize ahead of time for any inacuracies. 4) IDK even what to make of this. Hopefully it makes sense.

**14 August, 2007 _–_** **_Aurora_ , The Palamede, Pegasus**

 

“I can’t believe I’m the one saying this – and believe me, the irony is leaving a funny taste in my mouth already – but you need to rest.”

“Rodney-“

“I know you’ve not been sleeping and you can’t even pretend to tell me that you’ve been eating, but you _do_ need to sit down for an hour or ten and attempt to relax.”

“I can sit in the jumper.”

“Yes,” Rodney says in the tone he saves for talking with particular idiots and hasn’t had to use with John for _years_ , “but you can’t relax. Don’t get me wrong, I understand flying a jumper through a debris field is probably the closest thing you can get to a sexual experience without, well, me, but that’s not the kind of relaxing you should be aiming for right now.”

John sits down on the edge of the bunk – not to concede defeat, as Rodney had originally hoped, but to pull on his boots. “We already lost a day to me being unconscious-“

“Yet another reason you should be taking it easy instead of, I dunno, indulging your re-emergent death wish when you’ve already died _three times_ in the past _month_ and have had at least _two_ other near death experiences that I know about. I know this is hard for you to understand,” Rodney says, standing directly in front of him and inhibiting the shoe-tying process as much as possible, “but you are _mortal_ now. That means flesh and bone and soft, gooey organs that work a lot better inside you than scattered across a debris field because you were too tired to fly around the space garbage.”

There’s a storm in John’s eyes – not a literal one, thank god, though the echoes of stars remain somewhere in their depths, the only physical scar Ascension has left him with. “You built an atomic bomb on methamphetamines.”

“Entirely different circumstances and you know it.”

John seems to collapse in on himself, as if every ounce of fight within him left all at once. He refuses to look at Rodney. He refuses to look at anything. He just stares at his hands, starting at them like they hold the answers to all the questions he’d once known. “I feel so old, Rodney,” he says in the end, his voice a broken whisper, and he’s never heard John like this, never.

“I know.”

“I’ve wasted so much time.”

“No you-“

“Things are coming to a head. Everything, it’s coming to a head. All the streams are coming together.”

“John, you’re not making any sense.”

" _The river tells no lies, though standing on the shore the dishonest man still hears them._ "

“Now you’re _really_ not making sense,” he snorts, trying for levity but not being able to manage it around his worry. “Do you want me to radio Doctor Porter?”

John shakes his head fiercely, hands going to his head, fingers tangling in the spray of grey hair that had appeared after his latest brush with death. “It’s so loud. Why is it always so loud?”

Rodney sucks in a shaky breath, but somehow finds it in him to sound confident when he says, “You’re going to be fine, John. I promise. Just lie down for a while. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some sleep.”

Luckily John seems to agree with him this time. He doesn’t take off his boots or even lie down so much as _collapse in a horizontal manner_ , but Rodney counts it as a win anyway, and tucks a blanket around him before easing out into the hallway.

This is getting bad.

John is getting worse.

* * *

 

“What do you mean _John is getting worse_?”

“I mean that he’s getting _worse_. What part of that is hard to understand?”

“Details, Rodney,” Radek’s sighs, his voice coming in perfect surround sound from the speakers hidden about the engineering department. It’s impossible to tell that Radek’s not aboard _Aurora_ with him, but five hundred kilometres off the bow, aboard the largest of the ships they’ve been able to salvage from the Nebrian fleet. The lifecycle of the supergiant they had dropped out of hyperspace around had taxed the orbits of most of the fleet, causing the orbits of at least a dozen vessels to decay and creating the debris cloud they had appeared inside of, but six of varying size had survived the turmoil. Over the past four days, John has been able to recover five of them, and now they’re working on slaving the navigational controls of the ones they have so far to Rory’s for the journey home.

“What details? He wasn’t great went we left. This is merely a continuation of the same.”

Radek sighs more emphatically this time. “Has he been taking his medication?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be without holding my hand over his mouth and plugging his nose until he swallows.”

There’s a longer pause this time. He can hear the scrape of metal against machinery over the open channel. The ships they’ve been able to recover – _Mnemosyne, Terpsichore, Melpomene, Hermione_ and _Menoetius_ – had been shut down during their long absence and had not achieved sentience. This means physical rewiring of circuitry is required, which, while more conventional, is also rather more time consuming. “What does Rory have to say about it?”

“I don’t exactly know, seeing as how the only means I have to talk to her are currently destroyed beyond any hope of repair.”

“I was saving your life,” Radek reminds him lightly, continuing, “How does she _sound_ then? I am no _pastor_ , but I’ve spent enough time around them to know that her music should tell you something.”

He can’t fight the smile that forms, “She’s happy. I haven’t heard her like this since we first got her back to Atlantis.”

“There you go. Rory warned Evan about the Colonel when he was going Ori. I am sure she’d warn you if there was anything to actually worry about.”

“Have I told you lately how much I hate it when you’re right?”

“Define _lately_?”

Rodney closes the channel without dignifying the question with an answer.

* * *

* * *

 

**16 August, 2007 _–_ _Lethe_ , The Palamede, Pegasus**

 

He knows it’s not real.

Real is the bridge of _Lethe_ , the last of the _lintres_ to be found intact in this graveyard of wreckage and debris. Real is his hands on the controls, attempting to manoeuvre them around the larger pieces of dead _linter_. Real is _Aurora_ in the distance, a beacon of song and life and light in the darkness, more so then even the cold blue star behind them. Real is Miko, quietly at work in the engine room. Real is Anne Teldy, so strong and determined after everything that’s happened to her, babysitting him with a gun in one hand and a bodice ripper in the other.

Real is the blue fire that healed them all, leaving behind nothing but dried blood and a sweep of grey at his temples, as if it had drawn on his life force to heal their injuries before blood loss and carbon dioxide poisoning killed them all. That’s the suggestion Rodney had put forward, _life force_ , after watching the security feeds over and over again, his expression growing harder and colder with each iteration. _Life force_ , as if the fire were in some way Wraith and not merely the consequence of using Ascended powers without an Ascended plane to draw from – or so Iohannes assumes. That may not be real.

Real is the air in his lungs and the blood in his veins. Real is flesh and bone and soft, breakable organs.

Real is not the voices.

But they had once been real and that is the problem. They had once belonged to real people. He couldn’t save them and so they died and now he can hear them like ghosts from the past, screaming-

“ _-Wraith hive. Distance, two hundred twelve kilometres; inclination, thirty-six point three three five; azimuth, one-twelve point eight three eight-“_

Instinctively Iohannes adjusts the controls, pulling them into a climb that will allow them to get up and over the hive, realizing too late it is a memory and nothing more. He plays it off as best he can, turning the climb into a turn that will allow them to avoid a chunk of wreckage further on, but he can hear Teldy turn down the corner of her paperback behind him.

Unless she’s not real.

She must be real.

_“-try to outrun them, Licinus. Get as close to one of the stars as possible. Wraith hulls are organic. They won’t be able to tolerate the radiation the way we-”_

“I know,” he mutters mutinously. They think he’s too young, _the_ other bridge officers. They look at him and see _child_ and _youngest_ and _young, so young,_ forgetting that he’s been actively fighting in this war since he was six years old. He knows more about the Wraith and the strengths and weaknesses of their hives than anyone aboard. He can tell which Wraith faction they’re facing just by looking at the sensor shadow and he is not _young_ he is old _,_ he is ancient and eternal and he was born in darkness before fire and flame. The Catalyst is coming, far off still but close enough he can taste it, and they just have to trust him to guide them through it whole.

“Sir?”

 _“-certain that is advisable, Sir? We risk_ Tethys _already by attempting to pass between the supergiant and the neutron star. Any attempt to move closer to either may cause us to be ripped apart by-“_

“Trust me.”

“I really want to, Sir, but-“

He can hear his own voice now – but that’s not so strange. His voice is real. It is the only thing he’s had to sustain him through the long, cold millennia between the birth of the universe and the birth of his species. “ _Trust me_ ,” he repeats. “ _I can do this_.”

“ _This is the Palamede_ ,” his navigator reminds him. “ _Fancy flying gets people killed in the Palamede_.”

“ _Staying on course also gets us killed, Rhoda. Might as well go out fighting.”_

 _“Sir-_ “

“Sir!” the voice behind him shouts. Her name is Anne Teldy and she had a daughter before joining the Marines and she is not real. None of them are real. The voices are just there to distract him from the real problem.

Iohannes flips _Lethe_ around, dodging the inexplicable debris with ease and making for the heart of the star. _Lethe_ is little more than a corvette and lacks the shield capacity to stay within the corona of a supergiant for long, but her shields _are_ strong enough for him to use the star’s gravity to slingshot them out of the Palamede.

If they can get out of the Palamede, they can open a hyperspace window.

If they can open a hyperspace window, they’ll be safe. All of them will be safe.

“I can save them this time.”

“Save who?” the apparition that is Anne Teldy asks, moving to stand behind him.

She’s close, much too close, but Iohannes does not answer. He does not talk to ghosts.

“Colonel? What’s going on?” Her hand brushes against his shoulder, and that’s too much, much too much, and he snaps out reflexively, dropping her to the floor without turning away from the controls. Teyla would be proud. Possibly. She may not be real either.

Real are the sobbing children and the burning planets and the whispers on the wind that he can’t ignore – can never ignore – no matter how much he tries.

Real is the noise and the laugher and the pain – so much pain.

His hands come off the controls of their own accord, shuttering _Lethe_ to a halt above the pole of the star, translating all momentum to heat and groaning metal. His palms press to his forehead but the pressure doesn’t stop the screaming and-

He doesn’t hear Anne pull herself off the floor.

He doesn’t hear her upholster her sidearm.

He doesn’t hear her whisper, “Sorry, Sir,” before the butt of the pistol crashes into the back of his head.

* * *

* * *

 

**18 August, 2007 _–_ Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

“How is he?” Sam asks, turning away from the glass to give him at least the illusion of privacy. It seems wrong to see Sheppard like this, so broken and frail, in isolation once more, haunted by demons none of them can understand. She remembers her own troubles after her forced blending with the Tok’ra Jolinar and wonders how much worse it must be for the inescapable nightmares to be one’s own.

Doctor Porter sighs, lightly tapping her pen against her notes. “His bloodwork shows he stopped taking his medication at some point – that, or they’ve been flushed out of his system faster than they would in a human, though I’m inclined to think the former. He was showing remarkable improvement before we left for the Palamede.”

“And this is the result of going off his meds?”

“That and extreme stress, I believe. He was part of a mission to the Palamede once before, before he went into stasis.”

“I am aware.”

“I think…” Porter bites the inside of her cheek, reconsidering her statement. “I’m not comfortable making a diagnosis quite yet. My knowledge of Ancient physiology is shoddy at best, to say nothing of the psychology of a formerly Ascended being, but… But I think a lot of stuff happened in his past that Sheppard never allowed himself to work through.”

Sam frowns. “I thought stopping his heart the last time was supposed to get rid of those memories.”

“The ones from when he was Ascended, maybe, but I think it stirred up other memories he was trying to repress, amongst other things. He’s not had the easiest life.”

“Anything I should be concerned about?”

Porter frowns, tapping her pen in a sharp, staccato rhythm. “I don’t think so? I’m under the impression that he was even more isolated among his own people than he is now, so things are already looking up… But it’s going to take some time. From what I’ve seen of his record, he’s a _these things I do, that others may live_ kind of guy, and he’s had to watch a lot of people die over the years.”

With a sigh, Sam joins the other woman on the couch. “Where’s McKay? I’d have thought he’d want to be here for this.”

“He and Doctor Beckett were attempting to remove as many nanoids from Major Lorne’s bloodstream as safely possible. They believe,” she continues at Sam’s raised eyebrow, “that the Colonel might recover more quickly if the city is less upset about being unable to communicate with Doctor McKay. The data port they originally used is too damaged to allow a replacement Device anytime soon, so they’ve decided to do things they old-fashioned way.”

“Because brain surgery is the old-fashioned way,” she says with faint smile. “Never a dull day in the Pegasus galaxy.”

“Apparently.”

“I should go check on them – make sure they’re not getting up to too much mischief without Sheppard to watch over them.”

“Just one more thing before you go,” Porter adds quickly. “When we took of those things he wears on his arms – armbands? Vambraces, maybe? Anyway, when we took them off to put him in restraints, we found that this.” She flips through her notes quickly, eventually pulling out an incongruous Polaroid and offering it to Sam. On it is an infinity symbol, livid red like-“It’s been branded onto his right wrist.”

“He did this to himself?”

“I can only assume. Colonel Sheppard seemed surprised when I asked about it, so he may not remember doing it. Not even Doctor McKay knew about it. But that’s not the interesting part.”

“You’ve found the symbol somewhere in the ships they brought back? Something that might explain why John felt the need to burn it into his skin?”

This earns her a tight, lopsided smile. “No, or, at least, not yet. I wish it were as simple as that. Asking _how_ it got there gets me nowhere. Eventually I got smart about it and asked _why_ , which is the interesting bit. He just told me to ask Doctor Jackson. Every time I asked, that was his only answer.”

Surprise doesn’t quite cover Sam’s reaction. “Daniel? What would he have to do with it?”

“It could be an Ancient thing he doesn’t want to explain to us himself. Hell, it could be an _I was once Ascended_ thing. I don’t think we’ll know until we get Doctor Jackson here and ask him a few questions.”

“McKay’s going to love that.”

“Somehow,” Porter muses, “I think he’s going to be okay with anything, so long as it helps the Colonel manage his condition, whatever it may be.”


	23. Magister, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a one-shot. Then it grew long. And I decided, why not post? 
> 
> 1) They recovered six lintres in the Palamede: Mnemosyne, Terpsichore, Melpomene, Hermione, Lethe and Menoetius. The first is a Tethys-class linter, like the one Iohannes used to pilot. Lethe is a corvette, which we don't see in the show, but I figure there has to be something between Rory and the jumpers in size. 2) 2 weeks have passed. Iohannes is not miraculously better, but he is much better than when we last saw him. Recovery takes a long time. 3) About half-a-dozen drabbles are referenced in this fic. 4) This really grew into something more than I'd planned, but I hope you enjoy. 4) Oh, and the translation later is Die in a fire. 5) The title of this arc means "Teacher."

**1 September, 2007 _–_ Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

"Icarus, can I ask you a question?"

"I'd say you've more than earned that right," Iohannes says lightly, leaning across the tray table that separates them to capture one of 'Helianus' knights, "wouldn't you?"

This earns him a bright flash of boyish smile, the weight of the last few months falling away from his shoulders. "There is that." His smile falls as he contemplates his next move. "If there hadn't been the Wraith – if there hadn't been the war – what would you have wanted to do?"

"Other than a Guardsman, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Fly. You have no idea what it's like, growing up unable to see the sky. I was ten before I saw it. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I was supposed to be painting targets for the drones and I couldn't keep my eyes off the viewscreen.

He doesn't ask what a ten-year-old boy was doing directing artillery strikes, though Iohannes can tell there's a part of him that wants to. Instead, finally moving his last remaining bishop, 'Helianus reminds him, "But you can't fly all the time."

"Yes, I can. We could just take 'Lantis into orbit and wander the stars, like my ancestors used to. Travel from one end of the universe to the other, just exploring. Seventy million years and there's still so much we haven't seen." He knocks the bishop off its square with an under-promoted pawn. "Check."

"So," 'Helianus says, scowling at his rather pitiful position on the board, "you'd want to be an explorer then? More Captain Archer than Captain Kirk?"

Iohannes leans back against his raised hospital bed. "Don't let Rodney hear you talking that way. He'll make all of us sit down and work our way through the series chronologically and, as much as I love the _Stark Trek_ s, I'm still trying to catch up on _Wormhole X-treme_." Still, he considers the question, never haven given much thought to what he would do, since it had seemed likely the war would never end. "Maths," he says at great length. "I think I would have wanted to do something with maths."

"Research or teaching?"

"A little of both, probably. My people had a bit of a hard-on for knowledge. Most of our most honoured figures were teachers at some point or another."

"I wasn't aware you cared about what your people thought about you, Icarus," his adopted son says, kindly leaving off the obvious addition – that there's no one left of his species to care either way.

He shrugs. It's not about how he's remembered – Iohannes knows exactly how he'll be recorded in history and _honoured teacher_ won't make it into his obituary, not even if he drops everything from this point on and devotes the rest of his life to the cause. It's about all the things that only he remembers – all the things that will be lost when he finally dies – and his recent brushes with mortality have driven home that fact in a way that nothing had before.

"Still," 'Helianus continues, tipping his king over in capitulation, "I think you'd be good at it. You're good with people. You care about them, not the result. Plus," he adds wryly, sliding off the end of the hospital bed, "you wrote all those textbooks, so you must have some idea how to go about it."

Iohannes pushes the tray table to the side and grabs his boots, lacing them tightly before going anywhere near the cold hospital tiles. "I might if I remembered writing them."

'Helianus claps his shoulder reassuringly. "It'll come back to you." Then, pulling him into a one-armed sort of hug, drags him toward the exit. "C'mon. I figure they've got to be ready for us by now."

* * *

* * *

Rodney can't remember the last time he was this tired.

It's his own fault. There are, surprisingly, no life-or-death crises for him to contend with:

The addition of the Ancient ships recovered from the Palamede has bolstered their fleet to ten, ranging in size from the diminutive _Lethe_ (which, at seven hundred feet, is only slightly smaller than the _Daedalus_ ) to the _Tethys_ -class colossus that is _Mnemosyne_ (who, at twice the size of either _Vindicta_ or _Victoria_ , requires a separate hangar all her own). Damage from the orbiting debris of other wrecked vessels means that it will be some time before their new additions are ready for battle, but the size of their Argosy and the limits of their training facilities mean it will be even longer before they have crews.

They have time.

Although nominally at war with both the Wraith and the Replicators, neither has made incursions into Confederation space in over a year – barring July's retaliatory strike, of course. The Wraith seem mostly content to cull from the undeclared sections of the galaxy for the moment and the Replicators content to attack them in those areas of space. For the moment at least, it does the galaxy more good for them to build up their strength than take the battle to their foes.

They have time.

Atlantis is in good repair. The greenhouses are churning out more than enough rice, pulses, and root vegetables to feed the city's year-round population. They can get meat, sugar, and fresh fruit from off-world trade, and the botanists promise they'll have a solution to the coffee problem any day now. They have their work and they have all the books, music, and movies they could ever want thanks to 'Lantis' habit of hacking into the SGC's servers and downloading anything that catches her eye during dial-ins.

Carson has enough medical supplies to keep him happy for half-a-decade yet. Doctor Ahavah's pregnancy is going well, despite her rather severe case of morning sickness. Three _Émigré_ couples in the last two weeks have announced their engagements and everyone (according to Radek) says that Doctor Watson plans to ask one of the Athosian women to marry him as soon as he gets a clear answer from Teyla about just what that involves on Athos.

They have time.

It should be the start of their Golden Age.

It would be, except for John.

John.

He doesn't blame John for needing help, he really doesn't, but Rodney can't help being a little angry about the fact that John needed help and hadn't said anything. He just stopped taking his medication and fell further and further into the hole he had dug for himself until he could no longer tell past from present. If Miko didn't have the gene and at least a novice's idea of how to pilot an Ancient spaceship…

Rodney's nerves can't take it anymore. He loves John, but he can't be around him right now. Not until the urge to scream, or punch his fist into the wall, or just find his way into the bottom of a bottle lets up, anyway.

So he's stayed away while the medical staff does their thing. There's plenty for him to do on _Mnemosyne_ , even if none of it's urgent. (And if he can't sleep, well, who would have guessed it could take so long to relearn how to sleep alone?)

It also has the added bonus of being off the beaten track, well away from most of the other areas they've opened up to habitation. Which is probably why he almost jumps out of his skin when a voice from behind him says, "As far as hiding places go, this one is fairly obvious."

"Still took you two weeks to find me," Rodney counters, turning away from the panel he'd been in the middle of rewiring to direct his darkest look at the interloper.

Radek seems distinctly unimpressed by his glare, if not mildly bored. "It took me two hours to find you. It waited the rest to see if you would come out on your own."

"You say that like I've been holed up in here the whole time. I saw you in the Control Room just last night."

"After which you came straight back here, I'm sure." He crouches down, putting himself at eye level with the door controls Rodney's been working on hotwiring for the better part of an hour now, to his disgust. "What have you been working on?"

Rodney frowns at his tablet and inserts a second Ancient-adaptor into the crystal tray underneath the usual door controls before answering. "Doesn't it strike you as odd we've not found any bodies?"

"Bodies?"

"Bodies. Corpses. The vacuum-preserved remains of the Nebrian fleet's Ancient crew."

"It seemed strange," Radek admits, craning his neck trying to read code over his shoulder. "I assumed that they are in parts of the ships we have been unable to reach or had been blown out into space during an earlier impact."

"On some of the larger ones, alright, yes, maybe, but it's been two weeks. If we were going to find someone, we'd have found them already."

"Maybe not. We've been working on repairing the damages to _Terpsichore_ 's hull first. You appear to be the only one who's done any serious exploring of the interiors."

Rodney makes a face. "Yes, well, aren't we all glad that I did, because look what I found in the databanks." He tabs through a few screens before finding the one he wants and passing the tablet over. Radek takes it, careful not to jostle any of the wires running out of it. "You'd miss it on a quick pass-through, but anyone who spent thirty-seconds actually looking at the logs would see that three-hundred seventy-nine stasis pods aboard _Mnemosyne_ were activated in early 8273 BCE, or what amounts to it in the Ancient calendar, before everything but the cryonics system was shut down. Read a little bit further on, however, and you see," he taps the screen on the relevant entry, "that all three-hundred seventy-nine pods were deactivated one at a time over a course of eleven hours some five thousand years later."

"Someone woke them up?"

"That's what I thought at first. Then I ran a diagnostic on one of the stasis pods. The crew wasn't _woken up_. Someone terminated the life support and made sure everyone was good and dead before tossing the bodies out the airlock. It's the same story with the rest of them. Someone wanted these crews gone before we got here."

"Not the Wraith. The Wraith would have taken the crews alive."

"Your guess is as good as mine, for once. It's not like there an awful lot of races in Pegasus with spaceflight capabilities."

"Replicators would have taken the ships," Radek muses. "There were the Vanir, but they wouldn't have cared about the crew and probably still would have taken the ships."

"And the Wraith, as you said, would've taken the crew alive, before stripping the ships bare for tech," Rodney finishes quickly. "So either we've discovered yet _another_ super-powerful enemy that likes playing with Ancient corpses for reasons that I don't even want to begin to contemplate, or else one of the Ancients woke up, went psychotic, murdered the others, and dumped their bodies before spacing himself. Personally I'm hoping for psychopathic killer, if only because Carson refuses to write me a prescription for Valium."

"What does any of that have to do with this door?"

" _Tethys_ -class warships have Control Chairs. _Mnemosyne_ ," he says, excitement creeping back into his voice, "is _Tethys_ -class warship and through there, if I'm reading the schematics at all correctly, should be the Chair Room. With any luck, I'll be able to use it to access the logs of background systems to put together some sort of picture of what happened back in 3117 BCE, whether it was Wraith or psycho killers or something else entirely."

Radek sighs in his most put-upon manner and tabs the tablet back to the command-line interface. "I will help you with this only because I am now curious. Then we will go to Doctor Jackson's meeting."

"I am fully capable of getting this door open by myself, thank you very much, so you can just _leave_ and-"

" _Ne_. This meeting is about the Colonel. I have let you hide under rock for last two weeks, but now is time to come out and start acting like mature adult, even if is only act."

Rodney pulls out his harshest glare again on the off chance it will work better the second time around. "I don't like you happy. Your snark factor just goes through the roof when you're happy. Why can't you go back to being abrasive and miserable like the rest of us?"

He doesn't bother to respond. He just corrects a handful of errors in his code – proving, perhaps, that Rodney really should get some sleep sometime in the next twenty-one-and-a-half hours – and executes the program.

The doors slide open with a hiss of stale atmosphere.

"Show off."

The bastard actually laughs at him.

"No, really," Rodney protests, hastily collecting his gear, "you were scared of me once. What happened to that?"

" _Uhořet_ ," Radek says idly, shoving the rest of the gear into his hands before strolling into _Mnemosyne_ 's Chair Room. He stops almost immediately, faltering on his last step before swearing viciously under his breath.

Following the other man into the room, he asks, "What?"

"I think we may have found the Colonel's next _puzzle piece_."

Rodney walks around him slowly, the overheads brightening in instinctual recognition of a _pastor_ – one with the proper nanoids in his bloodstream at last, despite of his lingering mistrust of things he can't remove in his brain. The room is smaller than he'd expected, claustrophobic even, and at some point the panelling had been given over to rust and corrosion, but other than that it appears remarkably like Atlantis' Chair Room.

A holographic projector rests squarely on the dais in front of the Control Chair. In front of it, atop a sheet of thick parchment, is a black USB drive whose marking – a raised infinity symbol – is not clearly visible until he picks it up to investigate the writing underneath.

The symbol repeats on the paper, embossed in silver below the fold. Written in English on the inside are three words:

_Rodney––_

_Sorry._

_––Iohannes_


	24. Magister, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Anne Teldy. I have IDEAS about her character. They are mostly summed up [here](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/364837.html). So if any of you are WTF about her AJ background, that's where it all is. 2) Sunrise is an actual SG-1 spin-off novel. Dr. Jacobs is the Wormhole X-treme version of Daniel Jackson. 3) I've Woolsey feelings too, but that's for next time. 4) Like 90% of what Jackson says is real myth. The rest of it is just... AJ. 5) "Razor," the BSG quote used, techinally wouldn't be released for another 2 months, but similiar enough is said throughout the rest of the series I thought I could get away with it. 6) The end feels weak to me, but...

**1 September, 2007 _–_ Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

“I thought I might find you in here.”

Anne glances over the top of her book, less surprised to be found than to have been missed in the first place. As overwhelmingly _busy_ as Atlantis can be, it’s distressingly easy for a cog like herself to get lost in the clockwork. It’s not a complaint – if anything, Anne prefers it this way – but it does make her wonder why anyone, particularly Alison Porter, would seek her out. “Oh, really?”

“You have a habit of being on the outskirts of the action, ready to step up if needed but staying out of the way if not. This is the closest quiet corner to the Control Room I could think of.”

Anne blinks at the younger woman, otherwise managing to keep her shock off her face. The idea that Doctor Porter might be watching her, might have studied her enough to know her habits, stirs up a wild maelstrom of feelings in Anne’s stomach. On one hand, it’s never a good idea to attract attention from the base psychologist. On the other…

As if catching Anne’s concern, Doctor Porter grins at her – a wide, easy smile that brightens her entire face. “Sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be so _creepy stalker_. I just meant, I wanted to talk to you and I thought this is where you might be.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t need to sound so surprised!” she laughs, “I like you, Anne. You’re one of the few who don’t treat me like I’m going to Section 8 anyone who so much as looks at me funny. And you’re… steady, which is a relief after dealing with other peoples’ problems all day. Not that I don’t love my job – I’m thrilled to be here, I am – but Colonel Sheppard is exhausting on the best days, I imagine, let alone right now.”

“Alright,” Anne closes her book, the corners of her lips twitching upward of their own accord. “What did you want to talk about?”

“What are you reading today?”

“You tracked me down to ask about my book?”

“Well, you’re always reading something new every time I see you. It’s impressive. I can hardly remember the last time I had time to crack a book just for fun. There’s always another patient to see, or paperwork, or some research to catch up on…”

“I have trouble imagining you sitting still long enough to read any book all the way through.”

“Well, yes,” Alison admits, a touch of red on her cheeks, “but there are audiobooks now. And, anyway, that doesn’t answer the question of what you, who can actually sit still long enough to read, are currently reading.”

Anne slides the paperback down the length of the table.

It doesn’t quite make it to where Doctor Porter is still standing near the door, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Rounding the table, Alison glances at the badly Photoshopped cover and tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear before turning to the description on the back. “ _On the abandoned outpost of Acarsaid Dorch, Doctor Peter Jacobs makes a startling discovery – a discovery that leads Gate Team Alpha to a world on the brink of destruction…_ This is one of those _Wormhole X-treme_ spin-off books.”

“One of the better ones, thankfully.”

“You’re a fan?”

“Not really, though a lot of folks in the Program are. The show’s a hell of a lot funnier if you’ve spent some time around the actual SG-1. ”

Alison laughs again at that, handing back the book before taking the seat to Anne’s immediate left. “So, if you’re not a fan, why are you reading it? Did you run out of stuff of your own?”

“Miranda sends them to me.”

“Miranda?”

Even after so many years, Anne still feels a spike of adrenaline whenever someone asks her about her daughter. She can work past it, work around it, but she still fears that one day someone well be able to look into her eyes and see the lie she’s been telling for so long she almost believes it – or would, if the truth wasn’t so terrible. And if anyone could figure out the truth, it would be Doctor Porter, who after two months already knows too much about her if she can find her not quite hiding places and cares enough to want to learn more.

Even so, Anne’s voice is calm and not a little proud as she explains, “Miranda’s the baby of the family. My parents kicked her out six, seven years ago. I’ve been taking care of her ever since.”

“That’s terrible. How old is she now?”

“Twenty-one.”

“So a lot younger.”

“Big family,” Anne shrugs, as if it were no big deal, as if she hadn’t come to in the barn to find Ray on top of her, holding her down; as if she hadn’t had to endure her own mother calling her _whore_ and _tramp_ and _worthless_ when she found out Anne was pregnant. “There are four boys and two other girls between us. I had just turned seventeen when she was born.” She takes a deep breath. “But she’s a senior at Vanderbilt now. She’s going to be an elementary school teacher when she graduates.”

Alison’s lips turn up at that for some reason – but maybe the reason is more obvious to someone who isn’t trying not to have a panic attack in front of the goddamn _base psychologist_ – and there’s something wistful in her expression when she says, “But that doesn’t explain why she’s sending you what must amount to crates of _Wormhole X-treme_ spin-off novels when you don’t even _like_ the show.”

That’s a safe topic. “ _She_ likes the show. She asked me once about how realistic the military side of things was and I _may_ have gone on long enough to give her the impression that I watch it as well. So now she sends me the books as part of her care packages.”

“That’s adorable.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Shut up,” Alison says fondly, reaching out to punch Anne’s shoulder lightly. “You don’t have to read them, but you do and don’t hide it, and that makes it adorable. Not like some of these Marines who read Harry Potter by flashlight because they don’t want their buddies to see – not that I’m saying anyone here does that, but you know what I mean. You must really love her.”

“Yeah. I do.”

For a moment, Doctor Porter looks as if she wants to ask more, but doesn’t, if only because they can both hear the Gate activate on the other side of the Conference Room doors.

“That must be Doctor Jackson,” Anne says, hair falling in front of her eyes as she glances at her watch. “Looks like we’re finally getting this over with. You staying for the meeting?”

“Yeah. The higher ups figure that I’ve spent so much time babysitting him that I can tell if the Colonel’s sane just as well as you can.”

“I don’t think it’s a matter of _sanity_ or _insanity_. I think it’s a matter of whether he’s given up or not – but that’s what we’re here to talk about.”

* * *

* * *

 

It takes Daniel several seconds to bink the golden light from his eyes. By then the brilliance has already faded, passing through saffron and marigold into a tender sort of apricot rarely seen in Earth sunrises. He thinks to take a picture, to document the wonder that is this new world Atlantis has settled on, but by the time he drops his duffle bag to the floor, going for the camera the team had given him for his last birthday, the light’s changed again, settling into a crisp, clear dawn.

“Don’t worry,” Sam says, grinning at him from the foot of the stairs despite having been ignored for the last several minutes. “You’ll get at least one other chance while you’re here. The days are ten percent shorter here, and the people doing the calculations are fairly certain we’re heading into summer. There might even be some days left in their guess-the-solstice pool, if you want in.”

Daniel sets down his briefcase and pulls her into a hug. “It’s good to see you, Sam.”

“Good to see you too, Daniel,” she says earnestly, squeezing him tightly for a moment before letting go. “Glad you could spare the time to come visit.”

“I hear you’ve had an interesting couple of months.”

“No more than usual.” Her eyes flickers to his travelling companion. “Mister Woolsey, I wasn’t aware that you were coming.

“Last minute addition, I’m afraid,” Woolsey tells her with a touch of wry humour. “I was just finishing up at the SGC as Doctor Jackson was preparing to leave for Midway. I thought I might tag along and see how things are going here.”

Daniel shrugs when Sam casts a querying gaze in his direction. “It’s mostly true.”

“We’d better get upstairs then. Everyone’s gathering in the Conference Room.”

* * *

 

“It’s called a lemniscate,” he says, standing in the negative space formed by the curve of the joined conference tables and wishing for something to do with his hands. “It appears throughout recorded history, most notably on Earth as the mathematical symbol for potential infinity, but in certain traditions it also represents the concept of self-reciprocity or cyclicality, most likely owing to its similarity to what the Greeks called _ouroboros_. The _ouroboros_ , known to the Norse as _Jörmungandr_ , in Sanskrit as _Shrivatsa_ , and _Kajura_ by the Lardil of northern Australia, is, like the phoenix, a symbol of the eternal return – basically, the idea that the universe recurs and will continue to recur in a self-similar manner for all of time. Or, to quote pop culture, that _all this has happened before, and it will happen again, and again, and again_.”

Lorne raises an eyebrow and leans back in his chair, looking remarkably alien in his black Guardsmen’s uniform. “That’s all very nice, Doctor, “but that doesn’t explain how it ended up branded on Icarus’ arm, or why.”

Daniel frowns. “I’m getting there.”

“Can you get there a little faster?”

“Let him talk, ‘Helianus,” Sheppard says, managing to sound oddly parental despite – or, perhaps, because of – the way he doesn’t look up from the spiral bound notebook that’s held his attention since the moment he sat down. “It’s what you asked him here to do.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’re not even listening.”

Sheppard snorts, glancing up briefly as he turns his notebook to a fresh page. He looks _tired_. No, not just tired, but _worn_ , as if the effort of sitting in this room is a physical burden to him. For the first time since they met two years ago, Daniel finds himself thinking _John looks old_. “I forgot this for a reason. I’m not going to temp fate and see what happens when I remember it.”

“I don’t think that’s how it words, Sir,” Major Teldy offers from the opposite side of the Conference table, paying only nominally more attention to the proceedings than Sheppard has been.

“I’m not taking any chances. I’d like to get out of isolation for something other than Terran bureaucracy at work before all of my hair goes grey.” He gestures vaguely at Daniel. “Continue.”

Trying not to roll his eyes, he does: “The _ouroboros_ first appears on Earth in Ancient Egypt as a symbol of Atem, the god of creation. Curiously, he is one of the few deities the Tok’ra have no record of any goa’uld impersonating, despite his popularity in Predynastic Egypt.

“Atem was the first god, having created himself before giving rise to the god Shu and goddess Tefnut. His tears were said to have given shape to the first human beings. In addition to being the primary demiurgical figure in Egyptian tradition, Atem was also called _the finisher of the world_ as it was believed he would one day undo his work and sink back into the sea, thereby bringing about armageddon.

“From Ancient Egypt, the _ouroboros_ appears again in Judaic tradition as the snake that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden before heading north to Scandinavia. There it takes on the shape of Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, who will hold up the Earth until Ragnarök, when he will rise from the ocean to poison the sky. He will be defeated by Thor, who will then walk nine paces before falling dead from the serpent’s poison.”

This time it’s Sam who taps her pen pointedly on the table, signalling him to hurry up before Lorne can interrupt again.  

“What’s interesting, though,” he continues hurriedly, “is the World Serpent myth appears in almost identical form over thirty thousand years earlier on the Asgard homeworld of Othala. A few minor details are different – for instance, the serpent is called Miðgarðsormr in the Othalan version – but other than that the myths are incredibly similar.”

“Wouldn’t they be, though?” Sam asks somewhat apologetically, although what apology there is appears directed rather more at Lorne than Daniel himself. “The Asgard pretended to be the Ancient Norse gods for centuries. Surely some of their myths got mixed in with ours.”

Daniel nods. “In almost every other situation, you’d be right. But the earliest surviving record of the human version of the myth predates the Asgard presence on Earth, presuming their computer core wasn’t sanitized for our consumption, by almost five hundred years.”

“So they arose independently?”

“Yes. In fact, almost identical versions of both myths exist throughout our corner of the universe, all of them predating each culture’s interaction with any other civilization.”

Doctor Porter leans forward, quiet until now in her chair beside Major Teldy. “I’m sorry,” she says, half-raising her hand in a oddly youthful manner, “but isn’t this sort of thing incredibly unusual?”

“Extremely.”

“Then why has no one noticed it before? I mean, if this symbol is appearing throughout the universe alongside a common creation myth, shouldn’t someone have noticed it before now?”

“You’d normally be right, if not for two things. First: archaeologists tend to specialize, so even if they come across the same symbol once or twice, they might not realize its significance unless they’re looking for it, like I was. Second: I don’t think it was there for us to notice until two months ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean: the symbols haven’t always been there. When Sam asked me to look for uses of the lemniscate throughout history, I went back through my notes looking for any mention I might have made of it. The only instance I could remember was from my studies of Atem as part of the Heliopolitan creation myth, but when I went back I found dozens of entries. The most recent was in my notes from Ortus Mallum on Celestis just this past May. There’s almost an entire section devoted to _I’ve found it again_ and what it might mean for the same symbol to appear in every part of the universe we’ve ever explored. _And I have no memory of writing it_.”

Sam’s the first to realize what this must mean. “Somebody rewrote history.”

Everyone’s eyes flicker towards Sheppard.

Sheppard, if he notices at all, continues to ignore them, head bobbing slightly to music only he – and perhaps Lorne – can hear.

“That was my conclusion,” Daniel finds himself saying at length. “John said he spent his energy _fixing everything_ ,” he adds quietly. “When he Descended, that is. He couldn’t just watch; he wanted to fix what he could as well."

Doctor Porter mutters something that sounds a lot like, “ _Hot damn_.”

“It’s like the butterfly effect,” Lorne muses, as if amused by it all. “Icarus tries to stop the bombs from dropping on the first Loegria and suddenly this symbol starts appearing in recorded history.”

“We can only guess, but I imagine so. It’s like when that team in Egypt dug up the ZPM we used to send Colonel Everett here two years ago – we were going to change the time line, only to discover an alternate version of ourselves already had.”

“But that doesn’t explain the brand.”

“A reminder, perhaps?” Daniel shrugs. “Or maybe a talisman? Or it could be the next clue, a sign that if we follow the historical threads long enough we’ll find whatever the next piece of this puzzle his Ascended self left for us is.”

Without warning, the doors to the room open, every single panel spinning outwards to allow Rodney to storm into the room in high dudgeon. They whirl closed behind him, shutting with a louder _snick_ than Daniel would have believed possible. Almost in afterthought, the centre-most panel darts reopens just wide enough for Doctor Zelenka to enter carrying a small pyramidal device before bounding shut once more.

In the moment this last takes, Rodney stomps across the room. He stops directly across from Sheppard, who no more notices this action than he’s had anything else all morning, and slaps a sheet of thick parchment on top of his notebook.

“You,” Rodney declares, “are the most exhausting, insufferable, emotionally-repressed _idiot_ in the history of idiots everywhere.”

Sheppard lifts his head, grinning lazily when he realizes who it is. “Hey Rodney. Where’s the fire?”

“You should know, considering you set it.”

“Ah,” he says delicately, capping his pen and closing his notebook, crumpling the parchment he leaves inside. “I take it you found another puzzle piece then?”

Utterly scandalized, “You _knew_?”

“I suspected. What is it?”

“It’s lots of things. But the one I think that we’re meant to follow is the GPS coordinates for your dad’s grave on Earth.” 


	25. Natus, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **YES, YES, I KNOW**. 
> 
> I've been terrible about this story lately, but I just hated everything I wrote and then hated everything I'd ever written, and mostly just was going through the worst bit of depression I've had in a while. Thanks be to popkin16 for convincing me to even continue this, and I suppose thanks should also be given to [NBT](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3349583/chapters/7328477), without which I literally would not have had a reason to get out of bed in the morning. 
> 
> Anyway, school sucks, work is worse, and I completely decided to rewrite the first part of "Frater," because I'd boxed myself into a corner, and rename what I'd written "Natus," which means son or child. 
> 
> Without further ado... A chapter. Which ends abruptly, but at least is here.

**10 November, 2007 – Stargate Command, Terra, Avalon**

 

“What can you tell me about your father?”

“Besides the fact that he’s apparently buried somewhere in northern Scotland?”

“Yes,” Jackson says dryly, clicking his pen to a ready state for the notes he eagerly anticipates and can only be disappointed by. “Now that we’ve located his tomb, anything you can tell us about his personality would be helpful. What might we expect to find? What sort of traps or tests should be on the lookout for?”

Iohannes bites his lip and slumps further into his metal cold metal chair. They’ve stuck him in an interrogation room for this interview on some vague premise that their conference room is taken up by other off-world visitors, but he can’t bring himself to mind, the way Rodney had before they’d separated them. The Terrans still believe him to be dangerous. It’s the only correct assumption about him or his people they’ve ever had. Even so, he doesn’t know how he can possibly describe Father, who was like a supernova, burning fast and bright, blinding the universe with his brilliance but quickly consumed by his own passions. He was something from another world with all too mortal failings. He was a mess of contradictions and Iohannes had loved him, terrible father that he was.

“Father would have wanted to be cremated,” he says at long last. “He wasn’t- There wasn’t a lot Father agreed with the others about, but some things are so deeply engrained in the cultural consciousness that going against it would be unthinkable.”

“Like what?” Jackson asks eagerly, somewhat losing the point (so Iohannes feels) of the conversation.

“Pretty much everything I’ve done since your lot found me in stasis,” he shrugs. “Taking up with a Descendant. _Marrying_ a Descendant. Interfering with the development of other species. _Haeresis_.”

“Your father must have _taken up_ withsomeone here on Earth to have left behind so many descendants of his own.”

“Yeah, well, one of them must have buried him. If there any traps or anything in the tomb, he or she must have put them there, and I definitely can’t help you with that.”

Jackson frowns at him, clearly perturbed, though by what he cannot say. Perhaps it is his unwillingness to jump at the slightest ghost of a chance to be reunited his last meaningful blood relation, however many centuries he may have lain dead. Perhaps it’s that he expected more helpfulness from him now that Terra and the Confederation aren’t likely to go to war at the next poorly timed sneeze. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Daniel is disappointed in him.

Iohannes can’t bring himself to care.

“Was there something else?” he asks instead. He’s ready for this to be over. It’s bad enough that he’s agreed in a moment of madness to spend the next month on Terra lecturing on his maths proofs and generally letting the people of this world get used to him as _the rock star of mathematics_ before the SGC fills them in on _the real, live Alteran_ part. He doesn’t want to be stuck in this underground hellhole surrounded by people who’d sooner see him dead than walking free any longer than he has to.

“What? No. Nothing. I was just thinking – the longer I know you, the less I feel I know you at all.”

He holds his hands out wide, as if to show how little he has to hide. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m pretty much an open book.”

“No, you’re not. Oh, that’s what you want people to think. You do a pretty good job of throwing what everyone expects to see right back in their faces too. But everything that really matters to you, you hide. What I don’t get is why.”

Iohannes raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fine.” Jackson sighs, “Have it your way,” and begins to push back his chair. “Oh, one last thing.”

“Only one?”

“Our costume guy, Gunnery Sergeant Perez, has clothes for you guys. I advise changing before head up to the surface,” he says, a wry tone entering his voice as he gestures at the brigandine and robes Iohannes still wears.

Iohannes gives him a tight smile and heads for the door.

* * *

* * *

 

“How did it go?”

“Aside from the armchair psychoanalysis?”

“Yikes,” Rodney sympathizes as they enter the elevator in search of Gunnery Sergeant Perez and the clothes someone has found for them to wear in public, seeing as how the only place the current fashion in Pegasus wouldn’t look terribly out of place would be a Renaissance fair. It’s been some time since either of them has been at the SGC, but Rodney has this idea the office they’re looking for is somewhere around the fifteenth floor.

John slumps against the side of the elevator as it jerks into motion, taking them further from the Stargate. “I hate this place,” he says in a way that has become too familiar of late. He had been like fire before – a flame that drew them all too near and burned when they got too close – but lately he had been as if ice, so strong and yet so brittle, burning in a different sort of way. Though two months have passed since the events of the Palamede, it is far too soon to tell if John will ever be fully what he once was. Recovery takes time, even when one’s demons do not number the length and breadth of the universe itself.

There is so much pain in such few words, but the only comfort Rodney can offer is, “I know you do. I hate it too. I think they pump self-righteousness into the ventilation system, because God knows there’s no other explanation for how they’ve managed to gather so many sanctimonious idiots in one place – unless they’re screening for it in the hiring process.”

“They’re Father’s descendants,” John points out, sounding moderately like himself again. “Pharisaism is in their blood.”

“Really? From everything you’ve told me, I would’ve thought he was the first rebel without a cause.”

“Oh, he was that too. But he knew how to walk the walk and talk the talk. Everyone knew what he was, but no one could hold it against him.”

“And what was he?” Rodney asks, frowning slightly as the elevator slows to a halt far too soon for their stop. The more he hears about Janus, the less he understands the man – and the less he cares to.

“He was human.”

Before he has time to begin to even parse _that_ sentiment, the elevator doors slide open. As he suspected, they’re not on their floor – or the one Rodney thinks they need, anyway – and have stopped instead for other passengers. To his great disappointment, one of them is Colonel Mitchell, who looks even less pleased to see them than they are of him. The other is another Air Force officer, albeit one Rodney doesn’t recognize, and it is he who says, “Oh, hello,” and continues not unkindly, “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Mitchell, following the other man into the elevator, snorts. “Trust me, Young, you’re better off not knowing them.”

“Funny,” Rodney says, “I was about to say the same about you.”

Mitchell turns an unflattering shade of red, unable to do anything more than sputter as he searches for a response that will not make him seem for foolish. His companion, however, laughs, although the sound does not touch the sadness in his eyes. “They have you there, Cam. Though I’ve often suspected I’d be much better off if I didn’t know the first thing about the Stargate.”

The corners of John’s mouth twitch upwards as the elevator begins to slow once more, flecks of diamonds and starlight visible in his eyes. “You say that now, but the paths in the darkness between the stars will be the making of you, Everett Young, if they do not break you, as they have been for all men since the beginning of all things…” He blinks fiercely, stars falling from his eyes, and when John lifts his gaze his is himself again. “I am Iohannes Ianideus, and this is Doctor Rodney McKay.”

After a moment of silence, Rodney feels obliged to explain, “It’s not prophecy. He’s just seen too much. It effects him in strange ways.”

“You say that like I can’t hear you,” John says with some amusement. “Oh, look, our floor.”

It’s not their floor at all, but Rodney follows, figuring it would be best if they found another elevator before Mitchell finds his voice anyway. He does wait until the doors have snapped shut behind them before asking, “What on Earth was _that_ about?”

John shrugs absently, choosing a direction at random and ambling off that way. “If they’re going to think me mad, I might as well give them something to think me mad about.”

* * *

 

It’s not until their on the road, three-fourths of the way through Montana and flirting with the Idaho border, that Rodney has time to wonder if it was pretence at all or if the madness that had possessed John in the Palamede had ever truly passed. But there is nothing for it then, with unfamiliar stars above them and John slumped down in the passenger’s seat, long since asleep. He just has to trust John knows what he’s doing. He usually does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my absence, I've [updated John's family tree](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/379106.html), so it may be a little easier to read, and [relocated all the drabbles to their own series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/212528), where hopefully they'll be a little easier to read and keep in order.


	26. The End

Alright, it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve made my decision: 

**_The Ancient!John ‘verse is now abandoned._ **

I may continue to write related side stories, but the main narrative is now ended. I do this because, despite my love for the series, I have found it impossible to write any longer. I feel I’ve lost touch with the characters and am only continuing out of deference to whomever still may be reading this. It is a shame, because I love this ‘verse and the people I’ve met along the way, and can safely say it probably saved my life, but sometimes the hardest part about life is knowing when it’s time to give something up.

I've struggled with this decision, but I feel it's the best one for me at this time. And probably for you readers, if you ever want to know the end of this story. Because I’ve over-planned this to the extreme, here’s what I had planned for the remainder of the series in a very loose, very first-person sense:

* * *

 

Season Four 

Iohannes continues to struggle with his recent brush with immortality. He never really gets quite sane again, but he gets a handle on his visions, which are only really frequent when he’s under high periods of stress – not that you’d know he was stressed out at the time. It’s worst when he’s on Earth.

Rodney supports him where he can, and they largely repair the damage done to their relationship through math, because they’re nerds, specifically the math that Rodney began to develop while _he_ was Ascending. It’s published in the Spring of 2008 and becomes known as _Supersymmetric Algebra_ , greatly aiding the normalization process in M-Theory and so on. This eventually earns them a Chern Medal.

The whole thing with Teyla and Michael still happens. The only difference is that Kanaan isn’t Torren’s father – Richard Woolsey is, as I really wanted to explore that relationship. [I have a long drabble about it here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3349244/chapters/8729143), but it remains, sadly, unfinished.

Also, as we saw a peak of in what is posted, Kaleb is killed during a home invasion while Iohannes and Rodney are on Earth. Jeannie is kidnapped by the powers behind the heat sink from “Brain Storm,” which they crash in an attempt to save Jeannie. Which they do, but they end up outing John as an alien to a lot of big names in science. Afterwards, they end up taking Jeannie and Madison back to Atlantis. Madison grows up there, but ends up leaving for school (Oxford) at a young age (15), where she trains to be a physicist. Most of her early work is done on Earth, but she returns to Atlantis in her 30s to raise her family. Jeannie ends up marrying again (Carson Beckett), which surprises no one but the couple involved, because they were very good friends for a while before they became romantically involved.

A whole bunch of other kids are born in Atlantis in the following years, because it’s finally becoming a colony. Sam leaves Atlantis, but only because Jack came for the “inspection” instead of Woolsey in this ‘verse and she ends up knocked up again and wants to have the baby on Earth. Woolsey takes over, though no one at the SGC is aware that Teyla’s baby is his. Yet.

* * *

Inquisitor 

They eventually discover that Colonel Telford is leading a raid on the Antarctic Outpost in attempt to gain control of the _cathedra_ there. It’s discovered that he’s been brainwashed by the Lucian Alliance, and he’s eventually cured of this and remarkably penitent. The SGC agrees to give him a second chance – because humans can mess up a 100 times and be forgiven, but not aliens. 

The kicker is though that they meet Eli at the “Whistle Stop Lecture Tour” immediately after this, and are so impressed by his mathematics that Iohannes decides to make him an apprentice and take him back to Atlantis in his attempt to “discover what I would have been if I hadn’t had to be a solider” movement. He’s a bit of a “mathematics nazi” about it too, demanding that Eli only work in base-8 and learn Alteran, but it pays off in the end. He eventually ends up adopting Eli too, like he did Lorne. His Alteran name is _Athanasius Iohanideus Cambrianus,_ but everyone just calls him Eli. Except for Iohannes.

* * *

 

Season Five 

With Michael and the Asurans defeated, Atlantis only has to really worry about the Wraith these days. _That_ war gets going in full – particularly when Todd, whom Iohannes meets in this verse while tracking down Teyla earlier, does some double-triple crossing that makes him very hard to determine which side he’ll come down on with his self-serving-ness.

However, there’s still “The Shrine” to consider. Iohannes doesn’t want Rodney to die, but he’s promised not to go evil again to save him and is doing his best to see that he doesn’t. But he doesn’t want to lose Rodney forever, so before The Shrine idea comes up he takes Rodney to the extra-uterine incubators the Asgard tried out in Season Two and makes a baby because, hey, it’s worth a shot.

It works. And Rodney is understandably peeved once he’s saved, but mostly because they didn’t _talk_ about it first.

They still have to take Atlantis to Earth to deal with the superhive in this ‘verse, however there’s the added drama of the baby being just about ready to be born at right about the same time. They manage to save Earth, parking Atlantis just north of the Hawaiian Islands, and the baby is born a couple hours later. Her name is Alianora Elizabeta Ignia Pastor, _Alianora_ after John’s mother, _Elizabeta_ after Elizabeth, and _Pastor_ because the nanoids in both John and Rodney’s blood made her one from birth. But mostly they call her Nora. Because of the nature of the incubators, though, Nora winds up getting 2/3 rd of her DNA from John and only 1/3rd from Rodney, mostly because the incubators were designed to make Ancients more Ancient-y.

* * *

 

And Beyond

Woolsey steps down from the Head of Expedition position, defecting to Atlantis and acting an ambassador between Earth and Pegasus. John takes over the running of the city, and Lorne remains the _imperator_ of the galaxy. Atlantis having returned to Pegasus after about 2/3 months on Earth, and landed on a new world, called Augusta.

It’s works out very well, and Lorne becomes the best ruler one can possibly imagine. He and Radek get their act together and, while they don’t marry, stay together for the rest of their days.

Iohannes and Rodney have two more kids with the incubators – Ioséphus Ignius Augustus Pastor, born in November 2011 and called Auggie, and Catalina Constantina Ignia Pastor (after Iohannes’ maternal aunt and grandmother, respectively), born in July 2014 and called Cat. There are a whole bunch of kids in general in the city, and it really gets going as a University/Hospital/Trade Center. It’s amazing, really.

But the Wraith War is settled about a year after they return to Pegasus. Todd ends up siding with Atlantis to deliver the anti-wraith drug to all of the remaining wraith in the galaxy. After they’ve succeeded, they meet on the deck of _Vindicta_ to say their goodbyes and go their separate ways, Todd now human forever, but in a specular act of foresight / vengeance, Iohannes shoots Todd as he’s walking away and orders his fleet to open fire on the former-wraith worlds. The Wraith are exterminated, and Todd dies laughing, saying he taught Iohannes well. (This makes more sense with backstory, as I have in as head!canon that Todd was the power behind the defeat of the Ancients in the Battle of Tirianus.)

* * *

 

Stargate: Universe 

Shortly before they go back to Pegasus, Iohannes takes his apprentice Eli to the Icarus Base to help with the calculations to find _Destiny_. The planet is still attacked and some people are sent through the gate to _Destiny_ , but not near so many as in the series.

Eli is one of them, and he finds one of Iohannes’ puzzle pieces there (filled with books, movies, and other entertainment, some of which have yet to be released on Earth). In fact, they only find the Icarus planet through a puzzle piece Iohannes left in his father’s tomb on Earth, and which was discovered two years earlier.

Anyway, SGU goes mostly the same, only Jack’s clone J.C. is the XO and things run a lot more smoothly. Additionally, most of Rush’s schemes aren’t as serious in this version, mostly because he and Young meet under slightly better circumstances and actually come to like each other _before_ the evacuation. (I also want to write them falling in love, but I don’t think I could do better than “If Not You”. But that too takes time, and doesn’t really happen for real until three years in.) The main difference is that there are not communications stones. There is a comm station that allows them to talk to Atlantis, but it takes a lot of power and Iohannes is the only one who can make the comm on the other end work.

Anyway, because of the puzzle pieces, they’re able to redirect _Destiny_ back to Atlantis, but that is set to take five years. During this time, they do a lot of repairs using the spare parts on the ship. J.C. really comes into his own, though there’s some initial issues because of his clone-ness, as does Eli. There is also, as said, the Rush-Young thing. (And the BS with TJ never happens). The morale is also quite a bit higher.

When they get back to Atlantis, a lot of the crew elects to stay in the city because they’re very used to Ancient tech and their way of living at this point, and Atlantis did the most to bring them home. Some return to Earth (mainly Chloe Armstrong and Matthew Scott and their elk), but Young, Rush, J.C., and Eli all remain in the city and are integrated into the Émigrés and exiles there.

* * *

 

Even further beyond

The program is declassified on 3/3/12 and Iohannes does his “we come in peace” speech at the UN, which isn’t as terrifying as it should be because Iohannes has been a bit of a provocateur over the last few years. He announces Rodney is his husband during his “Whistle Stop Lecture Tour”, before DADT is revoked, when everyone thought he was a member of the USAF, and creates all sorts of trouble there. He’s also gone on for better STEM education in the places he visits and spends a lot of money trying to help prevent preventable diseases on Earth.

Anyway, he comes across as a good guy long before he comes out as an alien, and most people are familiar with _Pegasus X-treme_ , which paints him in a very good light.

Things get better between Earth and Atlantis, but they get best after they get _Destiny_ , which they use to travel to the Andromeda galaxy and meet up with the surviving Furlings (surviving because of a series of whole tech/luddite wars between the genetically modified/cybernetically altered/”true-geners” and etc factions. Only a few of the true-geners remain, and they only greet the expedition peacefully because they recognize _Destiny_ as identical to the one that spurred their technological development millennia before.

Anyway, an extra-galactic UN is eventually formed (the Pegasus Accords are signed in the early 2030s) and all the species kinda sorta mostly get along. It’s not paradise, but it’s better than anything that came before, and bears a resemblance to the good years of the Federation, before the Dominion Wars.

* * *

 

And the fate of our heroes

(I consider "[The Gambler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT-5NY83OYI)" by fun to be the theme to the epilogue.)

Rodney dies in 2057 at the age of 89. Iohannes is, of course, heartbroken, but thankfully doesn’t go evil this time trying to prevent it. They have a nice long life, and at this point have 3 children and 13 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. I say at this point because, shortly before death, they go to the incubators again and put some children in deep storage because there is a strong feeling in Pegasus at the time that the Alteran race shouldn’t be allowed to die out (that all races are unique and special and contribute to the health and longevity of the intergalactic UN), and the incubators can store embryos for a long time.

There are twelve incubators still functioning. They use all twelve and set up a system so that a pair (one male, one female) are born every 30 years or so. These are: Iosue Ignius Ascanius Pastor (2060), Diane Aurelia Ignia Pastor (2063), Moreducus Ignius Ascanius Pastor (2090), Minerva Aurelia Ignia Pastor (2093), Iohannes Ignius Ascanius Pastor (2120), Artemisa Aurelia Ignia Pastor (2123), Ricardus Ignius Ascanius Pastor (2150), Thalia Aurelia Ignia Pastor (2153), Ianus Ignius Ascanius Pastor (2180), Alcmene Aurelia Ascanius Pastor (2210), Antonius Ignius Ascanius Pastor (2210), and Alcyone Aurelia Ignia Pastor (2212). The guys are all named _Ascanius_ after Aenius’ son and the girls _Aurelia_ for the roman emperors of old. 

They also have a ton of descendants on the way, because their second child, Auggie, married Teyla and Woolsey’s daughter, Tegan, and they had 11 kids of their own, all with that same “let’s not let the Alteran race die out” mentality. More on that and the other family trees can be found [here](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/381603.html).

Iohannes spends his days with his rather extended family. That and teaching. He’s mostly stepped back from the everyday running of things, being very, very old at this point. He will take apprentices from the best math students, but rarely more than one at a time, and rarely more than one a decade.

He dies in 2113 at the relative age of 142, though subjectively he is over twice the age of the universe and then some. 

Shortly before his death, his great-niece Avery Miller Rosenthal, a historian, shows him a book she’s been working on about the rediscovery of the city and the rise of the Pegasus Confederation / intergalactic UN.

The first book is called _Pastor_. It begins like this:

_The first thing Rodney does after Atlantis rises from the deep is interface his computer into the city systems and try to figure out what the hell just happened… ([x](http://archiveofourown.org/works/260361/chapters/407376))_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote, folks.


End file.
